


One Soldier, Two

by fringeperson



Category: Captain America (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Accidental Time Travel, Accidental dimension hopping, All the Flirting, Doctor Harry Potter, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Happy Ending, Magic, Master of Death Harry Potter, No Statute of Secrecy because there are No Wizards, WW2 setting, you may recognise a few other faces that appear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:49:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 51,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27616513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fringeperson/pseuds/fringeperson
Summary: Evangeline Potter is used to damning the Potter Luck. This time though, she's beginning to see just why no Potter ever went to a Curse Breaker about the issue. Bucky Barnes is certainly not about to start complaining.~Originally posted in '17
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Harry Potter, Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Comments: 54
Kudos: 654
Collections: A Labyrinth of Fics, Harry_PotterxMarvel_xSC





	1. Chapter 1

For most people, wandering around the particularly frozen, extra-mountainous parts of the European countryside wasn't exactly the most inviting pass-time. Particularly during World War Two. But Evangeline Potter had never been 'most people'.

This particular little adventure had started with an accident, as a great many of her other adventures had before.

After the war with Voldemort, Evangeline had buried herself in studies. There was nothing like study to get Hermione off her back about getting out and being social. After all, if Hermione had to be physically dragged from her books by her fiance just to eat, then it would be hypocritical of her to suggest Evangeline be removed from them to socialise with people she barely knew – and certainly didn't care to.

At her twentieth birthday party – which was as small an affair as it could be when the Weasley clan was invited – she announced her intention to become a healer and a doctor. Kingsley had been bugging her via owl to _please_ join the Auror corps since the war ended. Evangeline had no such intention. She'd had enough of that life.

She'd never forget it. She'd never stop being totally, utterly, and completely paranoid (because there were still factions out for her head on a pike, and she wasn't stupid). But she didn't want to go on like that.

Becoming a non-magical doctor took years. Becoming a healer was just as time-consuming. A lot of the studies involved overlapped though – just for example, anatomy was anatomy, magical or muggle – so she quietly acquired a time-turner, and did both sets of studies at the same time. The repetition drilled it all into her head and made sure it all stayed very permanently lodged there, if nothing else.

She eventually graduated in the top ten of her class, for both sets of study. Not the ultimate top of the class, but top ten, and she was happy enough with that.

The accident happened about a week after that.

Now, it's important to understand that travelling backwards through time with a magical artefact like a time-turner is not at all something that is advisable when done at the exact same time as you are travelling across space. Be that by portkey, apparition, or simply walking along. Always be as still as possible when turning the time-turner. The side-effects vary for how much movement across space to how much movement back in time. A few steps while going back an hour might put you in, for example, entirely the wrong room in Hogwarts, but the time you were aiming at. Apparating across the country while going back an hour will probably land you in the wrong country a day or two ago. A portkey, on the other hand, adds extra spin. The spinning of the time-turner and the portkey will amplify each other if they're both active at the same time.

That was how Evangeline ended up on entirely the wrong continent, roughly half a century in the past. And just possibly in a different dimension.

She'd used her invisibility cloak to sneak about the strange, militaristic base where she'd ended up, trying to figure out where and when she was. Because she was definitely not in Ireland, and judging from the particular fashions of the uniforms being worn all around her, she wasn't in the early two-thousands either.

Now, her German was very nearly non-existent, but she knew it when she heard it, and she hadn't heard the word 'Grindlewald' anywhere. Based on a calendar she'd found, it was definitely WWII, so she really should have. The Statute of Secrecy had been created in the wake of this war, immediately followed by mass obliviations and a whole lot of death. She was hearing the word 'Hydra' a lot though for some reason, but she'd never heard the word related to Nazi Germany before. In fact, apart from a basic study of Greek monsters (yes, just like the Cerberus she'd met in her first year at Hogwarts, Hydras were real too), she'd never come across the word at all.

Then everything was blowing up all around her.

Evangeline held tight to her time-turner to make sure that it wouldn't turn again, and quickly apparated out to what she guessed was the nearest place she could clearly visualise. She did not want to splinch herself in these conditions.

Okay, so the mountains in his homeland that Viktor had insisted on showing her the Christmas after the war ended were a bit further away than she'd thought. At least, judging by how winded the apparition had left her. Though it was possible that the high altitude and driving wind were contributing to that feeling as well.

Well, no pressure, she supposed. She did have pretty much everything in her trunk, which was shrunken down and dangling from her charm bracelet. Along with the finger-nail-sized red box was an itsy-bitsy black motorcycle, a tiny gold cage with nothing in it, a small silver stag, and a little blue-and-white medical symbol on a circle of silver the size of her finger-nail.

Each one had a purpose. The trunk most obvious, as it contained just about everything she owned, from books and underwear to number twelve Grimmauld Place. Okay, so she'd gutted, de-magicked, and sold the building, but everything out of it (that she hadn't sold or set fire to) was inside her trunk. The motorcycle was simply shrunk down. It was Sirius' old enchanted Harley Davidson. Arthur Weasley's beat-up old car that he'd enchanted didn't have a patch on Sirius' bike, if for no other reason than Sirius actually knew what-all he was doing, and was a much better wizard than Arthur could have ever hoped to be.

The little gold cage was also shrunken down and covered with enchantments. It was for putting people in, cruel as that might sound. Anything put into that cage would shrink with it, and it had a ward scribed on the bottom that prevented any and all magic use within it, so, no transforming into an animagus and making a get-away, and no cursing her from within the cage as it dangled from her wrist. No getting away at all, in fact. It could only be opened from the outside, and only after it had been enlarged. The lock vanished completely when it shrank. Evangeline had learned that it was a good idea to always have somewhere to put a prisoner, just in case. She'd delivered five wanna-be's to the DMLE for questioning thanks to having that little cage on hand.

The stag carried protective wards. They'd been micro-etched all over the little guy with a laser and a powerful magnifying glass, so that each rune-sequence looked like a stroke that gave the illusion of fur. With a tap of her wand, they'd activate either layer the area around her for twenty metres, or else latch onto the building (or tent) she was in when she did it (and potentially extended for the same distance out around the outer wall of the structure). It also had a permanently active anti-Dementor ward, which prevented the foul creatures from getting within ten feet of her. Yes, she could cast the Patronus Charm, and cast it well, but that was only good if she was awake to cast it, and she had to sleep some times. After the war, the Dementors hadn't been returned to Azkaban, but they hadn't all been destroyed either. For Evangeline, that particular ward was not paranoid, but practical.

The blue-and-white Rod of Asclepius was, of course, a representative of her being a member of the British Medical Association, ie, a Doctor. It was also micro-etched with runes. Specifically, runic versions of charms that induced calm and trust. Not a whole lot, because Evangeline knew that some people (like herself) would just panic more if a wave of calm washed over them when they were on the edge of a panic attack, and out of nowhere she suddenly trusted a complete stranger with her life. This was just a nudge. "I'm a medical professional, and I can help if you let me. Breathe." That was about as much influence as that charm had, but she'd found it was utterly sufficient and didn't make her conscience ping about mind-control. It was tweaked to specifically only effect people who _needed_ medical aid too, so there was no way she was going to be able to use it to create her own army of followers.

Not that she would. Not her style.

No, her 'style' was accidentally getting lost in the annals of history a couple of dimensions over from her native one. Well, to avoid anything even remotely like this happening again (at least, any time soon), Evangeline popped her trunk off her charm bracelet, enlarged it, opened it, and put the time-turner into its secure little cubby-hole. She'd only had it out at all because jet-lag was still a thing, even when travelling by portkey, and a little time-travel would have helped her body-clock adjust without issue.

That would teach her to be pre-emptively ready for that. She'd always been sensible enough to leave the time-turner in her trunk until she got to where she was going _before_.

While she had the trunk out, she pulled on a few extra layers for warmth and changed her city shoes for hiking boots. Sure she could just pull out the broomstick and fly, but that would probably attract attention of all the wrong kinds, and besides, it wasn't like she had anywhere she needed to be right now. Not any more, anyway.

~oOo~

When she wasn't running from Snatchers or hunting down horcruxes, Evangeline quite liked camping. Even in the frozen tundra of wherever she was – and yes, she was pretty sure she was lost by now. Every day, she packed up camp and started walking, so she'd long left behind the spot she had apparated to, and a half-century (and a dimension) made the place not look very much like it had when Viktor had showed it to her. Then again, that had been a flying visit, literally. They had been on broomsticks the whole time. The closest they'd come to touching down was when one or other of them dived to scoop up a handful of snow, which was promptly thrown at the other before rising off into the sky again at breakneck speeds.

So, yes, lost, but she was enjoying herself despite that.

It was a nice day, for war-torn Europe, peaceful, at least in her little slice. Evangeline had made it all the way down to the bottom of the valley a couple of days before (at last) and had been walking along beside the river.

Peace didn't last long, but in all honesty, Evangeline was surprised that she'd not heard the noise of guns and warfare sooner. There was an explosion high above her somewhere, and when she heard the echoing scream of someone falling, expecting to die and refusing to go out silently, she was instantly alert, scanning all around, seeking out the owner of that terrified scream.

There was a cracking splash, like thin ice breaking, and she started frantically searching the river she was walking along beside. She didn't know if it was a Nazi or one of the Allied Forces. At that moment, it truly didn't matter. Her 'saving people thing' kicked in, honed, hardened, and polished into diamond brilliance by first the war, and then her medical studies.

There!

Her wand flicked into her hand and she quickly levitated him out of the water. As a child, she might have thoughtlessly dived in after him. An adult now, she knew that would be pointlessly counter-productive when she had magic to do the rescuing for her. If she'd not had magic though, she would have stripped off her outer layers and dived in, however cold the water might be.

She didn't recognise the uniform the man was wearing, but she didn't let that bother her. What she did let bother her was that, somewhere along the line, possibly during his fall, his left arm had been torn almost completely off. Magic could do much, but it couldn't re-grow a whole limb. Moody wouldn't have gone so long limping around on a peg-leg if it could.

Yes, there was skele-grow, vile potion that it was, but it re-grew bones _inside_ the body that had been vanished for one reason or another. Similarly, the potions that restored lost tissue – muscles and the like – needed the bones to be there to grow onto. Skin repair salves most of all couldn't be applied onto nothing.

Non-magical prosthetics were... better than a wooden peg. Not that most of the magical community was aware of that, with the way they by-and-large viewed non-magicals as something between a Neanderthal and a child, as far as intelligence went. Better than that, she could probably (almost certainly) add enchantments to such a prosthetic so that the fake limb acted just like a real one. It would take a lot of work though. Creating and enchanting objects wasn't exactly her speciality. She had the books for it, and she knew that plastic was out as a material, since plastic generally tended to either melt or explode when enchanted (something about the synthetic material it just wasn't robust enough), but...

Evangeline shook her head, banishing the speculative thoughts for the present. None of that would matter if he died of hypothermia or blood-loss before then.

She cast drying charms and warming charms and a charm that would make him cough up any water he'd inhaled or swallowed. She conjured a bandage that would do for now, and once she'd wrapped the bleeding stump that was all that remained of his left arm, she bundled him up. She had to conjure a big, thick, fluffy wool blanket, hot water bottles, and heat packs to bundle him up in but he was sufficiently bundled, for now. His lips were blue and he wasn't shivering, which was not a good sign.

She kept half an eye on him while she quickly set up her tent with a few more flicks of her wand, stepped inside it, and activated all the wards lying dormant on her charm bracelet. Once the tent and wards were up, she stepped back out to the man, who she floated in and set down on her bed. It was a lavish tent, but it was only meant for her own private use, which meant there was only one bed in it. Not that it would take a lot to conjure another bed, but conjured furniture never lasted the week, and while she didn't think it would take quite that long for him to heal, she still didn't want to risk it disappearing out from under either of them, with him in this condition and her the only one in a position to take care of him.

She got the fire going in the fireplace, then returned to her patient.

Even if she'd cast warming charms and drying charms, she needed to strip him. Needed to make sure that there weren't other injuries besides the obvious missing arm.

She started with the boots, and worked her way up. Each garment carefully set aside to be washed, pressed, and folded later. The only thing she left him wearing were his under-shorts, and only didn't strip those off as well because she could tell there was no blood on them. He did have other injuries. Mostly just scrapes and bruises, but the few other injuries were serious ones. A broken leg, a bullet in his side, and a concussion.

She'd have to use Legillimency to make sure his brain, his mind, was still intact. Legillimency wasn't gentle though. He'd probably thrash about a little while she was in his head, poking at his mind to make sure everything still worked. That would aggravate his injuries.

She treated the bullet wound first. The bullet was lodged in his side, the wound bleeding sluggishly, but it hadn't hit anything vital, which was good. She just has to pull the bullet out, cover the hole with bandages so he didn't bleed out, and force a potion down his throat that would (over the course of about five hours, unfortunately) fix the damage.

But five hours was better than five months, which is how long it would be before any non-magical doctor would be content to declare him fit from such a wound.

The potion to fix the bullet hole meant that she couldn't use a potion to fix the leg though. Not until it had run its course anyway. It was frustrating, but so many medical potions didn't play nicely with one another. She had to set the leg non-magically, and bind it up so that it could begin healing on its own, naturally. When the bullet wound was completely healed, then she would give him another potion, which would fix up his leg completely over the course of twelve hours. It would be like it had never broken. The muscles around the break wouldn't even be bruised.

She cleaned the cuts and scrapes, applied salves and covered them with bandages so that the stuff wouldn't be rubbed off. Then she went back to his missing arm.

She'd only done a quick bandage of it before, to make sure that he definitely wouldn't bleed out from it. Now she pulled those bandages away again, and got a proper look at the wound. It was nasty. The limb had truly been torn off. The remaining flesh was peppered with dirt, bits of rock, torn bits from his uniform, and half-melted chunks of ice.

He was unconscious for now, had been through her setting his broken leg, but now he was starting to shiver at last, which meant he was coming out of his hypothermia, which meant he would wake up soon. Cleaning the wound would likely be painful to him, and she didn't want to give him anything to make him sleep. He _needed_ to wake up.

Biting her lip, knowing it was a bad idea, but also aware it was more-or-less her only option, she conjured straps to hold him down to her bed. Then she got to cleaning the wound, thoroughly, carefully, disinfecting and applying skin-growth-salve as she went.

He started thrashing five minutes in.

"Shh," she soothed. "Shh. I'm just treating your injuries. You're safe."

"Barnes, Sergeant, three-two-five-five-seven-two-nine-five," he recited, his tone delirious, mechanical, and defeated.

"Potter, civilian, doctor," she answered as she reached up to gently smooth his dark hair back from his forehead. "You're safe now, Sergeant Barnes. You're not in enemy hands. You're only strapped down so that you don't jostle your wounds. I can't give you any anaesthetic, but this needs to be cleaned. I'm sorry if it hurts."

"British accent," Sergeant Barnes said softly. "Knew the British let women become Agents, didn't know they let women become doctors. Nice surprise. You wouldn't happen to know Agent Carter, would you? You're not faking it, right? You're not actually a German spy who's faking it real well?" he asked hopefully.

"Not every English woman knows every other English woman, however much it may seem like women are a secret network unto themselves sometimes. As for being a Nazi, or any other affiliate they may have at this point, no, I'm not," Evangeline answered with a smile. "I'm not anything except a bit geographically displaced, and in a position to help you through pure chance. Here," she conjured a smooth wooden stick out of his sight, then offered it to him by holding it out over his mouth. "You can bite down on this while I finish cleaning your wound. I've already set your leg and dealt with the bullet in your side. This is the last thing."

His lips parted, and closed around the stick when she set it between his teeth.

She finished cleaning up his stump to the sound of his pained grunts, applied salve to his hisses, and re-wrapped the lot to silence before she reclaimed the stick from his mouth and banished it – again, out of his sight. No reason to frighten him with the supernatural when he's already going to have to deal with losing an arm.

"I'm sorry I can't do more right now," she whispered as she brushed her fingers across his brow again. A tender action that also let her check his temperature. It wouldn't do any good for him to go from hypothermic to feverish.

"How bad is it?" he asked quietly. "Be honest with me, Ma'am, please."

"I pulled a bullet out of your side, but that will be completely healed in about -" she checked her watch. "Three hours. You had hypothermia, but you're out of the woods there, and luckily no signs of frostbite at all. You were half-drowned, but you coughed up most of the water on your own, even unconscious, while I worked on getting you warm, dry and a bit cleaner. After you've had something to eat, I think I'll be able to give you something to help speed up the healing for your leg."

"So I'll walk again?" Barnes asked hopefully.

Evangeline chuckled softly.

"Sergeant Barnes, if you're of a mind to, you'll be able to go dancing again," she assured him with a smile. "As far as your leg is concerned, anyway," she added with a frown that she directed to the remains of his left shoulder.

"Don't hold back on me Ma'am," Barnes begged. "I can see you're holding something back."

"Your left arm is gone," she told him softly. "You've got two, maybe three inches left of your upper arm after the shoulder joint."

"... So I might as well be dead then," Barnes croaked out.

"No!" Evangeline objected instantly. "No, don't you dare say that!"  
"I'm not going to be able to get any good amount of work with only one arm, Doll," Barnes said ruefully. "I will be shipped home as one of the injured, and I won't be able to get enough work from one day to the next to afford food, let alone a table to put it on."

"You also have a concussion, and seem to be talking jibberish," Evangeline noted. "I want you to try and relax for a moment, alright? I'm going to do something that will probably hurt, but I think it needs to be done."

Barnes sighed and did his best to relax under the restraints that still held him.

"You're the doctor, I guess."


	2. Chapter 2

The most recent memories came first.

" _Bucky! Hang on! Grab my hand!"_

_The metal rod he'd been holding tight to, been carefully shuffling along to reach his friend, broke free just as he tried to reach out to Steve. He fell, aware of the horror on his friend's face as he was forced to watch him fall. Both of them helpless._

" _Nooooo!"_

Just minutes before, he was standing on top of a ledge that was just wide enough for the whole team...

" _You remember when I made you ride The Cyclone at Coney Island?" he asked as he looked down at the railway below, and the cable that had been stretched across the ravine so they would be able to drop down onto a moving train._

" _Yeah, and I threw up?" Steve checked._

" _This isn't payback is it?" he asked wryly. He and Steve had a long-held system of looking out for each other, but always making it not be charity. Little pay-backs and pranks had always been part of that. Joking their way of dealing with the difficulties that came with growing up in their part of Brooklyn._

" _Now why would I do that?"_

_It was definitely payback._

Missions, sniping, looking through the scope and seeing his friend, adjusting the scope to get the enemy in sight and not letting them hurt his friend. Charging in, guns blazing, at his friend's side as they committed to a frontal assault. Being recruited by his friend into the special force that was dubbed 'The Howling Commandos', and being summarily dismissed by the beautiful woman in the red dress who, while she responded to what he said, she'd been speaking to his friend, not him.

" _I'm invisible. I- I'm turning into you. It's a horrible dream." That... sounded a lot more bitter than it should have. Not as joking as it should have. Had he really said that?_

Escaping from that first Hydra facility, the beam he was crossing on slowly giving way beneath him, everything below either exploding or on fire. Just barely making it to the other side as the beam dropped away from underneath him.

" _There's gotta be a rope or something!" he called frantically._

" _Just go! Get out of here!" Steve called back._

" _NO! Not without you!" Even the suggestion that he should save himself at the expense of his friend made him angry. He hadn't abandoned any of the hundred-and-seventh, and they were just people he'd been assigned with. Steve had been his best friend all his life._

Steve who had always been smaller. Had been too small and too sickly to be permitted to join the army, but he'd somehow done it anyway, and in the short re-cap he got from his friend, it seemed that he'd been picked for an experiment. He'd had some serum injected into him that had made him taller, stronger, not sick any more.

" _Did it hurt?" They'd injected him with stuff too. It had hurt. God. It had burned through his veins. It felt like it still did._

" _A little."_

" _Is it permanent?" He didn't know if he hoped it was or wasn't, and he didn't know who he was hoping it for._

" _So far."_

Injections. Needles. Stuff put into him and stuff taken out. Forced into a chair that clamped around his head and scrambled little bits of his brain while Zola talked at him. Insidious little lies that he did not, would not believe. No! No! No! He didn't want to! Make it stop!

Horrors had been planted in his mind as soon as they became aware of the sergeant's surprising ability to adapt and become stronger just a few degrees beyond normal human comprehension, even in the worst of situations. By that, Evangeline meant Barnes' own mental and physical ability was naturally superior to others, not that the Nazis couldn't understand what they'd found in him. He had skills that they determined to augment, to make even better by pumping into him a drug very similar to that which had gone into Schmitt and Rogers.

The words they had planted in his brain in an attempt to claim him as theirs, to claim his skills for their own, are more horrific than the physiological stamp they had left half-carved into him. Angry on his behalf, Evangeline reached out with her magic and seared away the triggers and conditioning that the Nazis had pumped into him. They were burned away until not even ashes (the metaphorical kind, in this case) remained.

Without the complete process – Steve had come before they were finished – it hadn't physically transformed Barnes as it had the other two.

Evangeline kept going, made sure everything was straight. That the memories from before he joined the war weren't tainted, that his childhood was intact and as it was supposed to be. A memory that had been tampered with always felt different. When she was satisfied, Evangeline pulled herself out of his mind and found that Barnes had passed out under the strain.

~oOo~

Transfiguration was more permanent than conjuration. That is to say, when something conjured reverted to what it had been made from, it turned into air. When something transfigured returned to what it had been made from... And if the transfiguration was purely aesthetic, rather than on an atomic level then the transfiguration would hold longer. Beetles to buttons were beetles again by the end of the week. A bolt of fabric could be transfigured into a dress and only more magic would change it again after that, though conjured buttons would vanish like nobody's business. Beetles resisted the change, fabric existed for exactly that purpose.

A wooden match into a silver needle would also revert, because there was nothing in wood that made it anything like silver. It might hold the needle shape, because it was so similar, but it would eventually revert to a wooden needle, rather than remain a silver one.

With these sorts of transfiguration principles (and a good many more) in mind, and a hearty soup simmering gently on the hob, Evangeline set herself to studying. To puzzling and planning and figuring out how to give Barnes a new arm that would work like the old one. A flesh arm couldn't be created. Anything that was 'living flesh' reverted from its transfiguration fairly quickly, depending on what it was and so on. Dudley's pig's tail had lasted all of August, but it was really just a bit of skin pulled out and made twirly. No bone or flesh or cartilage or anything, maybe a few nerves. It could have been easily removed with a sharp knife – and had been, by the doctors who had sterile instruments and a local anaesthetic so that Dudley wouldn't scream from having the hole in the skin of his backside stitched back together again. Then again, that had been a hex, rather than a transfiguration, so the rules were ever-so-slightly different.

"What's holding your attention so tight, Doll?" a tired, weak, but still rich and deep voice asked softly from the bed.

Evangeline jumped in her chair and twisted sharply.

"You're awake!" she exclaimed with a relieved smile. "I have some soup on the hob, if you're hungry, and I gave you the stuff for the leg while you were out. It will be stiff for a while longer still, but you should be able to walk short distances on it right now. For example, from the bed to the table."  
"I think I could eat," Barnes agreed as he pushed himself up into a sitting position with his one remaining arm.

The blanket that Evangeline had tucked around him when he'd passed out after the Legillimency slid down his body and exposed his naked torso to the slightly cooler air. Yes, she had a fire going, but there's always going to be a feeling of being cooler suddenly when the blankets fall away.

There's also the sensation of the blanket falling to take into account, and Barnes' eyes grew wide as he realised that he just felt it slide down his skin, not drag over his shirt. He looked down and, sure enough, his naked chest is on display to a member of the opposite sex, while he's sitting on a bed no less, and without a chaperone.

Normally, he didn't worry about chaperones too much, but normally, he just went dancing with the girls, maybe stole a kiss or two. This was so far beyond that. He spotted his boots on the floor by the bed, and the rest of his uniform – every single item of clothing he'd been wearing, bar one – missing.

"Nothing I haven't seen before," Evangeline assured him with an amused, gentle smile. "Medical school had practical lessons, so I've seen the full physiques of a good number of people, most of them not even half as handsome as you are, and I left your modesty intact."

"Thank you," Barnes said softly as he fought back the blush that was creeping up the back of his neck, towards his ears, and aiming to take over his cheeks. "But, uh..."

She giggled. She couldn't remember the last time she'd giggled. She knew she'd been given cause to laugh by various friends over the years, all of them determined to drive away the shadows of the war from each other's eyes. Giggling though... No. Actually, if she thought about it, Evangeline realised that she had never giggled before. Laughed, guffawed, snorted, huffed, chuckled, but giggling, that stereotypical girly thing to do over a cute boy... no. She hadn't ever.

But this man, who had lost his arm in a fall, in the middle of World War Two, deep in a mountain range somewhere in Europe, naked except for his under-shorts, had just made her giggle as he fumbled a little over a request for clothing.

"Your uniform is soaking," she explained gently. "Lots of blood and dirt, and when I've finished cleaning it, I dare say it's going to need to be mended."

"I can't go about in nothing in the presence of a lady though!" Barnes objected faintly. "It's not right!"

"I'm sure my father and godfather would agree with you," Evangeline allowed as she stood from her chair, "but they'd probably object to the fact that a man I'm not married to is practically naked in my bed in the first place."

"This is your bed?" Barnes asked, no less panicked, but now also stunned and shamed. "Where have you been sleeping? I'm pretty sure I've slept a lot since you saved my life. You can't have been awake the whole time."

"Actually, I have," she answered as she pulled a trunk of clothes out of the linen closet. Witch's tent and magic. Practically set up a whole house in fifteen minutes. Love it. "It's only been eighteen hours or so. Now, let's see. I think Sirius' old things might fit you."

She quickly passed him singlet and socks, which he just as quickly put on. Next, she pulled out a paisley purple shirt with lots of ruffles.

She pulled a face.

"If it wasn't one of the few things I have left of the old dog, I'd burn it as a monstrosity," she said firmly. "Sirius was my godfather. He died saving my life when I was fifteen," she added softly in explanation.

"Not to speak ill of the dead, but... did he understand about style?" Barnes asked carefully.

Evangeline snorted as she dropped the horrific shirt back into the trunk.

"He did," she answered. "But he also deliberately went out of his way to make his mother furious with him in revenge for her making his life a very painful, miserable hell. Anything cheerful, she hated. Anything bright, she hated. Anything that was an expression of her eldest son's independent identity -"

"She hated?" Barnes suggested with a wry smile.

"With every fibre of her evil, twisted being," Evangeline confirmed solemnly. She pulled out a different shirt, this one a simple, bold, red in wool-blended cotton. Not a frill or a ruffle or a bit of lace anywhere to be seen. "Much better," she approved. "Hope you don't mind red."

"I think I can live with this," Barnes answered as he took the offered shirt. "Better than the first one."

"I'll see if I can find you some trousers. Sirius had the broad shoulders, but he was skinnier than a rake towards the end. Didn't keep the trousers that fit him when he'd had a healthy weight. Shirts had to be the same size though, to fit the bone-structure, even if he didn't have much meat over those bones any more," she rattled off absently as she dug back into the trunk that held the clothes of the man who had been all the father she'd ever known.

She didn't have any of her real dad's clothes. Just about anything that could burn had gone up in smoke that Halloween night when Voldemort had attacked Godric's Hollow.

Barnes did his best to pull the shirt on with only one hand, and struggled – but did eventually succeed – to fumble the buttons through the holes. He'd just got the last one done up when he heard a soft laugh that would have drawn his attention even if he hadn't been about to direct it to the owner of that laugh.

She was holding up...

"I honestly had no idea that Sirius owned a kilt," Evangeline said, biting back laughter with every syllable. "I'll bet Dad had one just the same. This is McGonagall tartan. They'd have got them while they were in school, to tweak Professor McGonagall's nose."

Barnes was silently relieved that she set the tartan back down and picked up a pair of plain brown slacks. He didn't think his masculinity could take the hit of wearing a skirt, even if it was a skirt that was meant for men to wear. Bad enough he'd been invisible to that pretty Agent Carter when he stood next to Steve.

"She probably loved it though," Evangeline murmured to herself wistfully. "Here, these should fit you."

"Thank you," Barnes said softly. "I... I'm sorry for your loss."

Evangeline shrugged.

"It gets easier," she admitted as she wrapped her arms around herself, "and it's hardly your fault that I'm without them. Besides," she added, more determinedly cheerful as she handed over the trousers. "It means that I have clothes to give to handsome young soldiers who fall into my care."

"Do you say that to all the men who end up in your bed?" Barnes asked, a little bit of the old charm coming back to him as he sat there, blanket over his lap as he accepted the piece of clothing.

Evangeline laughed.

"Yes," she admitted with a bright, happy, teasing smile. "But then, you're the only man who's ever been in my bed for me to say it to. You put those on, I'll serve up that soup for us."


	3. Chapter 3

"You know, you never answered my question," Bucky said as he sat across from Doctor Potter at her kitchen table. The soup she'd set down in front of him was, quite possibly, the best thing he'd ever tasted. It felt really good to be wearing something other than a uniform as well.

"Hmm? Oh! What's got me distracted, Sergeant Barnes, is puzzling over how to make a prosthetic arm for you," the pretty lady doctor answered. "With the way technology always seems to advance around wars, I'm sure I could pilfer some interesting schematics from somebody that I could modify."

"You can do that?" Bucky asked, stunned to wonder, and with a candle-wick of hope lit in his chest at the idea. Being less than whole... Before the war, he hadn't known there were worse things than dying. He'd gotten his first taste of that thanks to Zola. Now with just one arm, he was reminded all over again. A prosthetic arm wouldn't be his arm back, but it would be better than having nothing there at all.

"Which part?" she asked with a smile that had more moxy than he'd ever seen on any dame before. Even that Agent Carter hadn't ever looked like that, and he watched how she acted around Steve real close. "Modify schematics? Technology isn't my strong-suit, but I'm an intelligent woman with some handsome motivation sitting in my kitchen. The sneaking about, finding and stealing of those schematics?"

Bucky took it back. _Now_ he'd never seen an expression with so much moxy. Whole lot of mischief too. Wow but this woman -!

"In and out unseen is easy," she declared firmly. "Finding what I'm actually looking for? That is much harder. But I was also thinking about what to do in the meantime. You're going to need something, and I could probably jimmy up a fairly basic rig without too much trouble. We should also see about getting you back to your base-camp, platoon, or whichever. Wouldn't want you to be declared dead and worry anybody back home."

Bucky stiffened.

"My little sister already got that letter once. And Steve... He... he's practically, and he saw me fall," he said softly.

"Right," she said, colour draining from her pretty face. "Any chance you could still make it to rendezvous?"

"The squad was meant to rendezvous back at base camp, fourteen-hundred hours, two days after we hit the train with Zola on it," he answered, his hand reached up to fist in his hair. "You said it's been eighteen hours I was out already, and there was more before that, right?"

"Sergeant Barnes, look at me," the lady doctor ordered, her voice soft but unwavering.

He looked up.

"Finish your soup, put your boots on, and then there's a walking stick by the door. You'll need it. I want you to keep your weight off that leg as much as possible for the next three hours still, at least," she instructed. "You go outside, I'll secure everything, and I will get you back to your base camp in time for rendezvous. Your friend won't have to mourn you."

"Again," Bucky corrected. "It will be the second time he'll have thought I died in this damn war, begging your pardon for the language Ma'am."

The lovely lady huffed.

"I assure you, Sergeant Barnes, I have used coarser myself when the situation merited it," she informed him with a smile. "And I find that few things merit strong language quite as well as war, however..." and here she ran a thoughtful, assessing gaze over him.

He carefully didn't tense up, though he certainly came to attention under the gaze of those pretty green eyes.

"I might give you a few more things to swear about before this day is over," she said, and her smile was as sweet as cheery pie. Even if it also looked like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

Bucky finished his soup, as instructed, pulled his boots on over the borrowed socks, and tucked the borrowed trousers into the tops. He found the walking stick, long and slim and black with a leather-wrapped section at the top that twisted strangely beneath the silver pommel that he would put his weight on. He stepped out through the door and promptly shivered. He probably should have asked for a coat. A shirt and a pair of slacks weren't enough to keep out the cold of European mountains in winter.

Five seconds later, Miss Potter followed him out, two large coats held over one arm, and a length of wood held in the other.

"I'm so sorry," she apologised, and helped him into a heavy wool coat the likes of which he'd only seen in books that had pictures of folks in Victorian England. "It was so cosy inside, and the company so wonderful, I completely forgot about the snow out here."

"I didn't freeze in the five seconds I was waiting for you," Bucky answered her with a smile, "though I am mighty grateful, for everything."

She smiled back at him a moment, then shook herself and pulled on her own thick coat. While she as doing that, she flicked the stick in her hand at the... no way. Tent? No way that had been a tent they'd been in! There'd been a stone fireplace! And now... it was packing itself up. Not just collapsing after a central pole was removed sort of 'packing up'. Actually neatly coiling its own ropes, bundling its one poles, and folding the canvas down into a neat little square.

The apparently logic-defying beauty set a little red thing on the ground, tapped it with her stick, and it grew to be a leather-covered trunk, with brass fixtures, big enough that Steve could have fit inside before he'd been turned into a Super Soldier. Another flick, and the lid popped open, the pieces of tent flew inside, and then she shrank the trunk down again and fixed it to her silver charm bracelet.

Bucky knew it wasn't polite, but he stared. He outright gaped, even. Silently worked his jaw like a fish gasping for breath on land.

Then she pulled the little black motorcycle off her charm bracelet, and Bucky was only _slightly_ more prepared for the sight of it growing into a full, massive bike with a side-car. There were even two helmets tucked into the side-car, and Bucky didn't move as the woman (who he wasn't so sure was actually real any more, but might more likely credit her to the delusions of a dying man) pulled the helmet onto his head and buckled it beneath his chin. Didn't flinch when she slid a pair of goggles over his eyes, and was mutely docile as she manoeuvred him into the side-car.

He finally blinked at the sound of the engine revving.

The stick had disappeared, but there were strange gold lights dancing over the black-painted petrol-tank. He watched as she ghosted her fingers over them absently as they roared forward. Then he made the mistake of peeking over the side when he felt his stomach drop, like the sensation from going up in an elevator.

"Holy shit!"

It seemed he'd finally rediscovered his voice.

"That's right, Sergeant Barnes, you are riding a flying motorcycle. One that is invisible to eye and ear unless you are riding it, or it is on the ground," Potter (who he was increasingly sure was a figment of his imagination, a hallucination right before he died) called over the roar of the engine and the wind. "Now, if I'm going to take you back to your base, I'm going to have to know where it is."

Seeing as he was probably already dead, and was having some post-death dream (because he fully believed in life after death), Bucky saw no harm in giving her the co-ordinates for the base and the rendezvous point. He knew that Howard Stark had shown off a floating car at his expo, he'd seen it, but it hadn't stayed floating for long, and it certainly hadn't gone anywhere. This black motorcycle quickly proved infinitely superior to the red show-piece.

He was never, ever going to tell Stark about this.


	4. Chapter 4

Heads shot up all around the camp at the sound of a roaring motorcycle engine coming down the road. It wasn't an unfamiliar sound, so it wasn't surprise had had heads popping up all over. Rather, it was eagerness. Mail frequently came in the side-car of a motorcycle. Intel was often carried by a messenger riding a motorcycle.

"I've got a special delivery for Captain America!" a female voice called out.

Which really surprised everybody. Agent Carter was the only woman in the outfit. Then again, that was the same accent. Maybe it was a British thing, to send women onto the battlefields?

A tall man in a uniform of red-white-and-blue, a silver star in the middle of his chest, strode across the camp towards the voice that had called for him. When he rounded a tent and caught sight of the motorcycle, he could only wonder what the 'special delivery' was.

Then the person in the side-car took off their helmet, and Captain America damn-near stumbled.

"Bucky," he breathed, eyes wide.

He ran for his friend then, and barely caught himself from crashing into the big black motorcycle – which was, he realised now, definitely not army regulation. Not for either side.

"You can't keep doing this to me Buck," Steve informed his best friend a little desperately as he very carefully didn't dent anything. "It was bad enough the first time. Watching you fall like that... I can't take the thought of you dying a _third_ time, Bucky."

"Payback," Bucky declared with a tired smile on his face. "For all those times you waded into fights you weren't strong enough for, or worked yourself up to an asthma attack trying to prove something, and I worried about you but you just stubbornly kept on doing it."

"Bruises and wheezing aren't the same as dying, Bucky," Steve insisted firmly.

"Don't I know it," Bucky grumbled. "I'm still not sure I'm not actually dead and dreaming all of this."

A hand, delicate and pale with perfectly shaped but unpolished nails, appeared between the two friends and took hold of Bucky's chin. It turned his head towards the owner, and Steve looked as well. A pretty face with bright green eyes was framed by a few loose, wispy curls of dark red hair that was a bit longer than strictly fashionable, most of it pulled back in a practical (but again, not strictly fashionable, in fact, not fashionable at all) tie at the base of her skull.

"You couldn't dream me up if you tried, Sergeant Barnes," a sweet contralto informed him as mischief danced in those amazingly green eyes, a coyly knowing smile on her lips. "And I'm going to make sure you don't forget me either. You're the first man who has been in my bed who wasn't trying to get there because of my inheritance."

Steve blushed.

"Thought you said earlier I was the first man to ever be in your bed," Bucky countered.

"Completely true," the unknown woman agreed as she released her hold on his chin. "Doesn't mean others didn't try very, very hard, before you fell at my feet, hypothermic, half-drowned, with a bullet-hole in your side, a broken leg, a concussion, and missing an arm. I guess I'm just a sucker for a doll-faced bloke in distress," she teased.

While Bucky's neck grew warm at the description of himself as 'a doll-faced bloke', Steve's blush drained from his face at the litany of injuries his best friend had apparently sustained, and it took the rest of his colour with it.

"Missing an arm?" he asked weakly.

Bucky grimaced.

"Put it this way, Punk," he said, forcing out a joke despite how bad he knew it to be. Bad enough that he'd wished for death instead when he'd first found out. "It's a good thing I'm right handed." It was probably the weakest, most limp – no, lame, that was the word – joke that he'd ever made in his life.

"With a list of injuries like that, I'm surprised that you're conscious, let alone making jokes about it," a new voice intruded. Colonel Philips had arrived on the scene, Agent Carter a half-step behind and to the right of him. "Glad you're not dead Barnes. Rogers was getting all mopey without you, and went through a whole lot of booze before he realised he couldn't get drunk. Kept on drinking anyway."

"Can't get drunk?" Bucky questioned, thrown.

"Apparently it's a side-effect," Steve admitted. "My metabolism is four times faster, so I just burn through it before it can affect me."

"Drink something stronger," the mysterious woman who had brought Bucky back suggested, and threw her leg over the motorcycle to dismount. "Are you the commanding officer of this... amalgam of personnel?" she asked Colonel Philips.

"I am indeed," he answered, and offered his hand to shake. "Colonel Chester Philips, and who might you be, young missy?"

"Doctor Evangeline Potter," she answered as she grasped the offered hand and pumped it firmly, but not too hard, just the way Bill had taught her. "Pleasure to meet you, Colonel."

"Doctor Potter, if it's not too much trouble, I would very much like to know how you came across our lost boy," Colonel Philips requested.

"An accident while travelling caused me to be severely geographically displaced. I've been wandering those mountains for the better part of two months with no idea which direction I should go to find the good guys. It was just as fortunate for me as for Sergeant Barnes that we met. If we hadn't, he'd probably be dead, and I would definitely still be lost in the mountains," she explained succinctly. "With permission, I'd like to set up my tent with your camp and maybe join your medical team."

"Haven't got one," the Colonel admitted. "We've got some pretty good first-aid supplies and a medic on hand, but we've been sending the injured to the nearest mash unit."

"Then with permission, I'll set up my tent and a triage tent," Doctor Potter said, altering her offer slightly, but it was clear that she intended to attach herself to the unit. "I'm not letting Sergeant Barnes out of my sight. You probably won't find a better medical professional than me anywhere on this continent or the next, and I intend to see Sergeant Barnes' recovery through to the point where he has a working prosthetic that he's going to be able to live with."

She'd almost be the best by default simply because she had internalised so many medical and scientific advances that hadn't happened yet.

"Ma'am, it is standard procedure to send the wounded back home," Colonel Philips pointed out frankly. "You couldn't do your medical bit over there just as easily?"

"I suppose I could," Doctor Potter agreed mildly. "But I get the feeling my expertise will be needed here sooner than later."

"The only place civilians have in a war is the USO, entertaining the troops and moving on."

"Civilians don't have any place in any war, Colonel. They just get caught in it by accident and suffer for it," the lady doctor countered sharply. "It won't be the first war I've seen, Colonel Philips, I can promise you that. It's just that the last war I was in, I was a front-line fighter. I didn't become a doctor until after that was over."

"A woman on the front line?" It surprised just about everybody that it was Agent Carter, of all people, asking that question.

"Not a place any teenager plans to be," Potter answered, subtly emphasising that it was actually a lot worse than a woman on the front line; it was a girl. "But once I was there, I couldn't leave until it was over."

Colonel Philips was silent for a moment as he considered the unknown woman before him.

She'd brought back a man they had all thought dead. She had brought him back alive against the odds, considering the injuries she'd listed. She'd brought him back through enemy lines on a motorcycle. A motorcycle that didn't have so much as a scratch on it that he could see.

If nothing else, she could handle herself, and she could handle injures.

Still.

"What do you know about Hydra?" he demanded.

"Greek monster, generally depicted as having a lizard-like appearance," she answered. "Chop off a head, another three grow back. Smarter heroes who fought the thing learned quickly that there was no point slicing the heads off, and went for other methods of killing instead."

Colonel Philips narrowed his eyes at that. It felt like he was being mocked, but at the same time...

"What kind of methods?" Agent Carter questioned.

"As someone who only vaguely remembers that lesson, I think dropping a mountain on it, crushing it to death, was the method used. I could be wrong. As a doctor, however, I am supposed to favour quick and merciful deaths, and death by crushing isn't either. Therefore... cut out the heart. I don't believe any text ever talks about Hydra's heart re-growing, just the head," Doctor Potter supplied thoughtfully. "On the other hand, my more practical, paranoid, and vindictive side is quite fond of putting a pike up through the enemy's soft palate, up into their brain, then having fun with lots and lots of highly flammable fluids and a lit match... and that wouldn't be cutting off heads either, technically."

"No offence Ma'am, but your last suggestion there was mildly terrifying," Steve said, filling in the stunned silence that had followed the pretty doctor's suggestions.

"I had to kill the same man seven times in the last war I was involved in," Potter stated solemnly, seriously, though she off-set that with an almost-careless shrug. "You learn to make sure they're properly dead when you're dealing with that sort of thing. Colonel, where can I pitch my tent?"

"... Next to Agent Carter's."


	5. Chapter 5

"Johan Schmitt belongs in a bug-house," Colonel Philips declared. Quite a way to begin the meeting that was taking place in the bunker beneath the fortified town a few clicks away from where base-camp was out in the middle of the forest. The bunker where the intelligence analysts worked with the civilian contractors. "He thinks he's a god and he's willing to blow up half the world to prove it, starting with the USA."

"Schmitt's working with powers beyond our capabilities," Howard Stark added firmly as he took his seat, only slightly late to the meeting. Evangeline had been introduced to Stark because she needed the co-operation of the engineering genius they had on hand to get the materials to make Barnes' prosthetic. Or would, as soon as the plans were in hand. "He gets across the Atlantic? He'll wipe out the entire eastern seaboard in an hour."

There was a heavy silence that followed that pronouncement.

"How much time we got?" asked Gabe Jones, one of the Howling Commandos (he hated that name, but had been overruled). He was clearly of African heritage, but his accent placed him as an American, and his linguistic skills as a man who had definitely had the benefit of an expensive education.

"According to my new best friend, less than twenty-four hours," Colonel Philips relayed, less than pleased about the information, but glad to have it all the same.

"Where is he now?" queried one of the intelligence crew.

"Hydra's last base is here," Colonel Philips answered, and held up a photograph, finger laid over a specific point. "In the Alps. Five-hundred feet below the surface."

"So what are we supposed to do?" asked another of the Commandos. Asian face, American accent, minimal manners. In the flying introduction she'd had to all of the Howling Commandos when they converged on her to express their relief over Barnes' survival, he'd given his name as Jim Morita. "I mean, it's not like we can just knock on the front door."

"Why not?" Rogers asked.

"Because that's a level of suicide, Steve," Barnes immediately reprimanded, "and I've had enough brushes with death this week, thanks."

Rogers winced at the reminder.

"And Schmitt's 'powers' might be beyond your capabilities Stark," Barnes continued, "but unless I really was completely delirious at the time, then I don't think they're beyond Doctor Potter's."

"What could the pretty lady doctor do that a weapons engineer of my calibre couldn't?" Stark questioned, a clear sceptic with the amount of sarcasm in his voice.

"You'd be surprised," Barnes defended.

"That's very sweet of you to say so, Sergeant Barnes," Evangeline spoke up with a smile.

Heads whipped around, searching for her.

Evangeline bit her lip to keep the laughter in, and pulled off her invisibility cloak. She probably shouldn't have snuck in, but she'd gotten to have an uninterrupted hour with Zola, and her methods were much more effective than Colonel Philips'.

"Holy -!"

Men were biting off swears all around the room, in sweet deference to the presence of Agent Carter and Evangeline herself. Not all of them bothered with the politeness though. Colonel Philips swore long, loud, and colourfully.

"No need for any of that," Evangeline dismissed as she fought back a chuckle and neatly folded the heirloom cloak. "I grant that it's certainly a bit esoteric, but not holy. Not to my knowledge, anyway."

"Hell, you got any more of those?" Colonel Philips asked, more than just half-hopeful while at the same time completely, cynically realistic as to the probability. Also a good deal less concerned about being well-mannered because he was in mixed company.

"I'm sorry, but this is a family heirloom," Evangeline replied. "I also hope you weren't too terribly attached to Zola, as he is now little more than a drooling sack of flesh."

"Dammit!"

"Colonel, in my experience, suicidal devotion to the cause is a wonderful thing to have in your enemies," Evangeline stated as she conjured a chair next to Barnes, completely uncaring of all the bug-eyed stares she got for it. "It means that when you find someone in such an organisation that doesn't kill themselves, they're the ones to bleed dry of information and then bleed them dry of everything else. There is a difference between giving your life to a cause and dedicating your life to it."

"Just what are you getting at, Doctor Potter?" Colonel Philips demanded.

"People who _give_ their lives for the cause die, Colonel. They fight and they die and they don't care that they die as long as the agenda is furthered," Evangeline declared. "People who _dedicate_ their lives to the cause, however, these people _live_. They pretend to be harmless, they pretend to be helpless, they pretend they didn't like a lot of what they did, and they pretend to surrender. Then they offer information, and offer to put themselves to use for you. But you know what they're really doing? They're insinuating themselves, planting the seeds of the cause they have dedicated themselves to in new, fertile, ignorant soil, where they can quietly nurture their cause back from the brink of death."

"You killed Zola," Agent Carter realised. "A prisoner of war."

"No, I lobotomised him," Evangeline corrected, her tone as though she were speaking of having cut roses instead of brain matter. "I cut off the first two fingers of each hand, and I sliced his poisonous little tongue in half, and no, I didn't torture him. I'm a doctor. I did it properly, with more care than he had for anybody under his knife. As you can see, there's not so much as a spot of blood on me anywhere, and blood would certainly show up on a white blouse like this one."

Barnes, once he'd shaken off the reminder of his time on Zola's cutting table, snorted in amusement at Evangeline's black wit.

"You get what you wanted from him?" he asked. "I know you said you wanted some answers only he could give you."

"Yes," Evangeline declared proudly, chin raised. "Hydra has a couple of allies hiding in Russia, among other places, and the Russians have designs for a mechanical arm that I'm sure I'll be able to adapt. The plans aren't Zola's, so I'll have to find them first, but I have the recipe for the formula that he pumped into you. I also have the location of three more Hydra bases."

"What?!" went up the cry all around the room.

"Two are scientific research facilities, full of more brilliant and passionate psychopaths, sociopaths, and amoral, ambitious bastards like Zola and Schmitt. The other is a combined camp for weapons testing and prisoners, Jews and POWs alike, that they... haven't found a use for yet," Evangeline supplied with a good level of distaste. "Johan Schmitt's cousin, one Klaus Schmidt, is in charge of that one. Zola met him once. Liked him quite well. Nasty piece of work, really."

"You're going to tell us where those bases are," Colonel Philips ordered.

"I have already put the pins on the map," Evangeline waved off, setting aside her discomfort and the unhappy memories it all brought back. "Gentlemen, Agent Carter, hydras need to have a stump from which to grow new heads. The soldiers that you have been decimating up until this point are so many heads. Zola and Schmitt are the bodies from which more heads grow. Do you understand?"

"Yeah, we get it," Colonel Philips agreed, though he was still a bit unhappy about things, not least of which was being told how to handle his valuable prisoners by a civilian woman. "Might have been useful to pick his brains a bit more though. He belongs in a bug-house just as much as Schmitt, but he was useful."

"If you want me to, I can play his entire life, from his perspective, on a movie screen," Evangeline stated coolly. "But I will not stand for him to draw breath only to spew poisonous miasma into the ears of powerful fools. He's safer this way."

"...You're not wrong," Colonel Philips agreed reluctantly once he'd processed that the woman before him could apparently play the man's life on a movie screen. "Useful as he could have been, I don't want to leave a legacy of freedom only to have also left a legacy for Hydra to spring up from again. Alright Doc, you got any other fancy tricks that can help us out here?"

"Give me a wish-list," she instructed. "Be as outlandish as you like, I'll tell you if I can't do it."

"If everyone had a shield like mine," Rogers spoke up, "well, it seems to be the only thing that stops whatever it is they're firing at us."

Evangeline held out her hand imperiously, and when the shield was handed over, she narrowed her eyes at it.

"It's vibranium," Stark offered. "It's stronger than steel, and a third the weight. It's completely vibration absorbent, and that right there? That's all we've got of the stuff. It's the rarest metal on earth."

"Make a pile of the same in whatever you have handy," she instructed absently as she continued to examine the metal. "I'll make it a lot less rare for a little while."

"You can do that?" Howard asked, eyes wide and excited.

"The alchemical transfiguration will last for roughly... a month, though possibly up to a year, before it begins to deteriorate, depending on what you make them from initially," Evangeline answered as she handed Rogers his shield back. "But make the shield first, then transmutation. That way around will be much easier for me."

"Not sure we've got time for that," Agent Carter reminded them.

"I can personally travel up to twenty-four hours backward in time at a pop, and I can carry as many as five people with me at a time," Evangeline offered. "No more, and I can't skip forwards."

Stunned silence descended.

Then Howard was up out of his seat and moving.

"Stark!" Philips snapped. "Where are you going?"

"To set up a few extra forges. If Doctor Potter can take five of my people back twenty-four hours, then by the time this meeting is over, I'll have a bunch of people ready to be taken back to make shields for the men. They'll just need space to do it," he answered, and continued to jog out of the meeting room.

"And warning!" Evangeline called after him. "We don't want to cause a paradox!"

Howard Stark, civilian contractor, paused to turn and give her a mock-salute, a smirk dancing on his moustachioed face.

"Once we've got a squad of five men outfitted, we'll give them orders and send them off," Colonel Philips declared firmly. "And I'd like to send them off as soon as this meeting is finished, if that's possible."

"Should be," Evangeline agreed tentatively. "Would you like me to make them harder to spot as well?"

"I thought you only had one of those fancy bits of cloth that made you invisible," Colonel Philips countered.

Evangeline took a deep breath, drew her wand, focused on the spell, and tapped the top of Barnes' head lightly.

"I feel like I just got egged," he complained as he twitched his shoulders.

"You look like a ghost," countered Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan, the largest member of the Howling Commandos bar Rogers. His handlebar moustache twitched as he grinned beneath his bowler hat. "I can see the chair right through you."

"And this bit of fun is something you can do for everyone?" asked James Montgomery 'Monty' Falsworth, the British member of Rogers' team, eagerly. "How long will it last?"

"I can do this for every single soldier in the company," Evangeline answered. "I'll be tired after, but I can do it, and it should last about five hours from casting, unless I specifically remove it."

"That's as good as invisible if the men move quietly and stick to the shadows," Agent Carter admired, her brown eyes wide.

"I don't suppose there's also some way you can drop them men at the base without us having to worry about transport?" Colonel Philips queried, a dash of sarcasm in his voice even as he was hoping for a positive response.

"Only if you want them queasy from the journey," Evangeline answered plainly. "Travel by supernatural means is... rough until you get used to it."

"How long will they be throwing up?" Colonel Philips asked. "What sort of experience will it be?"

"A hook behind your navel and you're spinning faster than laundry in a washing machine. If you give me exact co-ordinates for where you want each squad, down to the minute, then they will be there down to the minute," Evangeline stated. "I can send them off without having to go with them. I can even make sure they appear back here either on a timer or a coded word."

With a last decisive nod, Colonel Philips started giving orders.


	6. Chapter 6

For the following twenty-four hours (which, relatively speaking, felt more like a week for Evangeline), shields were made and passed out, men were taken back in time and stood at attention while Evangeline turned their dog-tags into portkeys, orders were given, and men disappeared off to their post around the Hydra base. Men appeared in a clearing just outside of base-camp, pulled back through time, and promptly placed under disillusionment. Not in that order, but Evangeline was doing so much at once she was beginning to get dizzy – if she saw herself busy somewhere, she turned around and went looking for somewhere else to be.

It was Sergeant Barnes that kept track of her movements, surprisingly enough. Or perhaps not, since his injury meant he wouldn't be joining the battle ahead. Apart from the weapons division, he was the only one. Even Agent Carter would be joining the fray for this one.

Sergeant Barnes made sure Doctor Potter slept when she needed to. He made sure she ate when she needed to. He made sure she was on time to get the next lot of troops off and that she had the co-ordinates for their drop-off. He even found the bathroom and laundry she had in her tent (well, she had a stone fireplace and a gas oven, he'd figured having plumbing was a fairly logical step, all things considered) and made sure she had clean clothes and a hot bath waiting for her at the end of her 'day'.

Of course, when she wasn't doing what was needed for the upcoming battle, or catching a break to eat and sleep, Doctor Potter was working on putting together that prosthetic arm that she had promised to Sergeant Barnes. She hadn't gotten hold of anybody else's plans yet, so she was working theoretically, from scratch, and a bit backwards.

He didn't catch her doing that until after he'd waved off the last of the men going out to fight. He'd searched the rest of the camp, just to make sure she wasn't anywhere else, and then gone to check her tent. He'd knocked first of course, called a 'hello' to announce his presence.

In all honesty, he had expected to find her passed out on her couch, too tired to even make it to her bed, and completely dead to the world. Instead, he got an answering 'in here', which he followed into the library (which, like the rest of the tent's interior, should really not have fit but still did anyway despite that).

Four strange men, silvery and only half-there-looking, hovered before her on the other side of the desk she was sitting at. A small line-up of lime-green feathers were standing on their tips on top of an equivalent line-up of note-pads, and there was a box of various precious and semi-precious metals and stones in a box next to the desk.

"Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, may I introduced you to my father, James Charlus Potter," the lady presented, and the young man with messy hair and round glasses on the furthest right inclined his head.

Barnes nodded back.

"My godfather, Sirius Orion Black," she continued, and the older, gaunter man with a carefully trimmed moustache and goatee and curly hair down to his shoulders gave him an assessing look and a nod.

Which Barnes again returned.

"Their good friend Remus John Lupin," she persisted, and this man looked more haggard than either of the first two. Still, he mustered a smile for Barnes.

He returned it tentatively.

"And a very recent acquaintance of my own, Doctor Abraham Erskine," she concluded with a grand wave to the eldest-looking of the silvery-shimmering gentlemen.

"The man who invented the Super Soldier Serum," Barnes noted.

"Yes," the silvery-shimmering man agreed.

"Doll, what's going on?" Barnes asked warily, eyes wide as they twitched along the line of... ghosts, he supposed, and back to her.

Potter stretched an arm out to tap a finger at the base of a little thing Barnes had dismissed as a decorative piece on the desk. A simple, circular gold base supported a gold ring (which was welded to the base so that it remained upright), upon which was mounted a little black stone.

"This is the Stone of Resurrection," Potter disclosed, then curled back into her chair drowsily. "It can't bring the dead back to true life, but it allows me to summon the spirits of those passed. I don't do it often, in fact I avoid doing it at all as a rule, but I needed the help."

"You need sleep, Doll," Barnes corrected. "I expected to find you asleep on your couch when I came in, not whatever it is you're doing here."

"He's right, Jelly-Bean," said the man introduced as her father, James Potter. "You need sleep."

Potter shook her head.

"I need to get a start on this prosthetic," she countered.

"And you've made a start," the haggard Remus Lupin insisted.

"You have all the information you got from Zola, you know of the existence of the existing plans, and I'm sure I can continue to speak to this clever quill of yours that writes down whatever I say while you sleep," Doctor Erskine agreed.

Potter shook her head again.

"As the person that summoned you, I've got to be awake to keep you here," she denied, "and knowing that plans exist somewhere in enemy hands doesn't automatically put them into mine."

"So cast your strongest summoning charm for them, then go to bed. No making plans to go sneaking off to the frozen arse-end of Siberia by yourself to find them. There won't be any wards to stop the magic from reaching the files. The work can wait," Sirius Black said firmly. "Sergeant Barnes, you don't mind waiting a bit longer to get a new arm, do you?"

Barnes shook his head at once.

"I'm a draftee, not a volunteer. I stuck around when I was given the option of going home because I needed to keep an eye on Steve. I'm not really in a hurry to be battle-ready again," he assured the four ghosts, as well as Potter. "Especially if it comes at the cost of your health, Doll," he added to the lady doctor specifically.

"Doctors are the worst patients," Doctor Erskine quipped with a faint smile.

"Sergeant Barnes," James Potter spoke up. "Thank you for taking care of my Jelly-Bean."

"Least I could do, Sir," Barnes answered smartly, aware that he was talking to a Father – something he'd never done before, not really. All the girls he'd taken dancing, that had been all it was. Never had he had a meeting with any parental figure of the girl he was going on a date with. It was rare he even met the siblings, unless it was a sister he was trying to set up with Steve.

"Understand though, that if you mistreat her in any way, you've got all of us and her mother waiting for you on the other side," Sirius Black added, his tone light and speculative.

"Yes Sir," Barnes agreed sharply.

Potter sighed, but reached out again and gave the stone on top of the ring a twist within its fitting, and the four ghosts faded away. She didn't move to get up from her chair though.

"Come on, Doll," Barnes urged softly as he wrapped his arm around her and gently tugged her to her feet. "You can't sleep here. Your bed will get jealous that you're sleeping somewhere else."

Potter giggled a little at the joke.

"I must be exhausted," she said as she let herself be guided out of the library. "That was terrible."

"You have every right to be exhausted," Barnes countered easily. "You've done so many impossible things today, not least of which was compressing a week into a single day."

"Mm, yeah, that's not a very healthy thing to do actually," she admitted softly. "No more time-travel for me for a month, minimum. Already locked up the Time Turner after I took back the last squad."

"Good."

Evangeline waited until she was sitting on her bed before she cast the summoning charm to bring her the plans for the prosthetic. A charm that she cast with all the strength and will left to her in that moment. She pushed herself to beyond exhausted from the casting, but she knew that her magic had latched onto the file and was actively working to bring it to her, though with the distance, it would take a while. It was a greater distance than any she had summoned over before, even if, as Sirius had said, there were no wards to bar the way. The spell cast and the magic at work, Evangeline's wand slipped from her fingers as she swayed.

Barnes caught her before she could fall off the bed onto her face, and lay her down properly. He pulled her slippers off, and picked up her wand. It made his fingers tingle to hold it, like his hand had fallen asleep. He set the wand down on the bedside table.


	7. Chapter 7

Evangeline woke up to the strains of Bing Crosby singing duet with various people, the songs a few of the beautifully timeless hits – a good number of which were particularly popular in the World War Two era, and had been sung by lots of different people over the years. Confused by the presence of music, she pulled on a pale blue terry-robe over her pyjamas, slid her feet into her fluffy white slippers, and went to investigate.

A certain sergeant was sitting on the couch in the living space with a book in his hand, a steaming tin cup on the coffee table by his elbow, and the record player going round beside him. Evangeline had long-since come to realise that more modern methods of music recording didn't like being surrounded by magic. Even just being kept in a magical tent meant that CD players started skipping and scratching the CDs, and tape-decks pulled the ribbons and ate them mercilessly. Vinyl was the only option, but that was alright, because gramophones could be enchanted, unlike CD players and tape-decks.

"You found my record collection then," she observed with a smile. Mind, it had also been her Potter grandparent's record collection, as well as Sirius' and Remus', before all of the records had come into her possession. It rightly should have included records that belonged to her parents, but the house at Godric's Hollow had been... well, what records there might have been weren't in any condition to be played. She'd added a few of her own choices over the years too. Not a whole lot, and most of the newer artists hadn't caught on that vinyl was still a viable medium for making sales in, so what she had bought was more of the same artists as had already been bought, but still.

Barnes looked up from his book and smiled back.

"I didn't recognise more than half of what you've got," he admitted freely, "but Crosby is good for just relaxing to. I boiled the kettle a little while ago as well, if you wanted tea or coffee. It should still be hot."

"It's been a lot, hasn't it?" Evangeline posited softly as she shook her head to the offer of a hot drink, and settled down beside him on the couch. "A lot, and all so suddenly as well. I don't know what possessed me to just... no, I do know. In a war, you need every advantage you can get, and what these Hydra people are doing disgusts me. Thank you, Sergeant Barnes," she said suddenly.

"For what?" he asked, a vague smile on his face, amused at her half-awake ramblings and the abrupt change of direction.

"For not running screaming from all the strangeness," Evangeline admitted, voice small. "It didn't even register last night that I was introducing you to the spirits of the dead, no preparation or warning. I'm sorry for that, and truly grateful for the care you've shown me."

"Doll, I ain't gonna lie to you, there's moments where I think I'm stuck in a fever dream or having some bizarre post-death experience," Barnes admitted with a rueful, crooked smile. "But like you said, I couldn't dream you up if I tried, and I owe you big time for saving me."

"You don't owe me a thing," Evangeline protested. "You were injured, I'm a doctor, I couldn't _not_ help you. If anything, I owe you, for taking care of me while I ran myself ragged."

"For which the whole division is in your debt," Barnes pointed out with a chuckle. "Alright, alright. Enough of the 'owe you more' game," he said, waving the argument off as she opened her mouth to take her turn. "Call it square, but you'd better talk to Colonel Philips about you getting paid for what you did."

Evangeline shrugged.

"I got paid," she murmured. "I got copies of all the notes on Hydra projects that can be modified to serve a medical purpose, rather than just being weapons. Money doesn't mean much to me really. I'm already rich enough to buy New York. I don't need more money."

"All the same," Barnes whispered, stunned by the casual declaration of just how very rich the young woman at the other end of the couch was. He couldn't even imagine that much money. "If you don't make people pay for the things you do for them, then they won't appreciate it quite as much. They'll just take it, and take it for granted."

"Mm," Evangeline hummed in soft agreement. "Sad, but generally true."

Barnes set his book down in his lap then, closed it, and Evangeline caught sight of the cover. She winced at the sight of it. _Great Wizards and Witches of the Twentieth Century_. She was in that book. So were relevant dates. Why did she even have that book? No, wait, that was the re-print that had come out after the war. She was actually quoted in that one. The publishers had given her a free copy as thanks.

"Of all the books you could have picked," she moaned softly, and thumped her head back on the couch.

"Well, after meeting four ghosts, I got curious about what-all was going on with my favourite lady doctor," Barnes admitted. "And on one of the earlier... turns... you said I could help myself to your library if I wanted. I thought you said you couldn't go back more than twenty-four hours? Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to go tattling if you lied, you're exhausted enough as it is and I do not want to imagine what you'd be like if you were taken advantage of further than that, but..."

"Not a lie," Evangeline answered. "Unless there's an accident, then a Time Turner does have a maximum range of twenty-four hours. Trouble is, accidents with Time Turners can dump you in distant places, not just distant times. When I landed, completely lost, I did some snooping about to try and figure out where and when I'd landed."

"Sensible enough," Barnes agreed with an understanding nod, but his words clearly filler, his tone blatantly prompting.

"As far as I can puzzle out, I'm not even on the same planet, or I am, but in a parallel world, if that makes sense," she explained. "Instead of German wizards led by Grindlewald working with Hitler to create a 'perfect race', it's Schmitt and his Hydra working through and beyond Hitler to create a 'perfect world', possibly _for_ Hitler's 'perfect race', because he is still doing that. I'm a very long way from home, and I have no way, none at all, of ever getting back."

That was the first time she'd actually admitted it out loud.

Unbidden, unwanted, hot tears sprang up in her eyes. She hadn't given thought to the friends she'd left behind, to their reactions to her being gone, she'd stayed focused on her immediate situation. It was just living from day-to-day at first, camping in the unforgiving mountains. Then it was saving Sergeant Barnes and getting him back to his unit, very closely followed by helping the company safely launch an attack on a Hydra base. She'd been too busy to think about the life she had left behind, but now... Now as Bing Crosby crooned _May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You_ in duet with Nat King Cole, and a strong arm slowly wrapped around her shoulders, Evangeline broke down.

"Get it all out," Barnes urged softly as he pulled her close. He let her bury her face in his chest, and he rested his chin on top of her head. "Don't you worry about a thing, you just get it all out."

"It's not like I left much of a life behind," Evangeline admitted when she had her sobs under control enough that she could talk through her sniffles. "All my friends had families of their own, and we were growing apart as we had less and less in common to talk about, since none of us wanted to talk about the war at all. I've got a clean slate, a fresh start... I've even got a handsome man in my life now," she added and directed a wet but still teasing smile up at Barnes.

"That's right you do, Doll," Barnes agreed softly, and gave her a tender squeeze. "At least until you get sick of me."

"I honestly can't see that happening, Sergeant Barnes," she said with a weak little smile. "Not if you're still sticking with me after reading that."

"Bucky," he corrected.

"Not James?" Evangeline asked, and her smile grew a little stronger, a little wider.

"You can if you like," he allowed, even as he shook his head, a slightly exasperated expression on his face – though the exasperation was tempered with fondness. "Just about everyone calls me Bucky though, or Buck, and didn't you say your dad was James?"

"And his friends all called him Prongs," Evangeline said with a nod, a distantly fond smile touching her lips. Reminiscing on long-dead was easier than thinking about those who she had just recently left behind. It was an old pain that she was used to.

Bucky frowned with his eyebrows, though the smile stayed on his face. It was the expression of someone who knew they were being led to ask a question, and whatever the answer was, it was likely to be a punch-line.

"Alright, I'll play, why'd they call him Prongs?"

"Because of his impressive antlers when he turned into a stag," Evangeline said, and bit her lip as her green eyes danced behind their left-behind sheen of tears.

A male deer was alternately called both stag and buck. Maybe it had something to do with being named James by their parents? No, that couldn't be it. There were two other guys in the Commandos who were called James. Neither one had a connection to deer, well, not that he knew of. Whatever else, Bucky laughed. He laughed loud and deep and rich, and when Evangeline giggled into his side, he shifted his arm down from her shoulders to her waist, and tugged her a little bit closer.

"And do you turn into an animal?" Bucky asked. "Wait, that's even possible?"

Evangeline bit down on her lip and tried not to outright laugh.

"In reverse order: yes, it's possible, and no, I don't," she answered, and finally relented and let her own arms slide around Bucky's waist. "I could learn how if I wanted to, but it would almost definitely take a couple of years, and it's really best done with someone around who can help reverse the transformation if you screw up."

Bucky pulled one corner of his mouth back in a 'yeah, no' grimace.

"Which counts me out, along with everybody else in the world, leaving you in a situation where you're all the help you've got here for that sort of thing, apart from the dead people you can call on," he recognised. "Can they... ?"

Evangeline shook her head.

"No," she said firmly in answer to the half-formed question. "The magical core in a witch or wizard is partially spiritual, a big fat pile of esoteric, and a pinch ephemeral, but it is also actually a lot more physical than a lot of people give credit or credence to."

"I'll take your word for it," Bucky said with a giving smile. "I can tell you were just about to launch into a technical explanation, but I wouldn't understand what you'd be talking about. I'm not stupid, I'd probably understand more than a lot of folks from my neighbourhood. But you're a very clever doctor, and while I read whatever I can get, I'm still just a guy from Brooklyn who used to sell and haul furniture for a living. That's before I was drafted, anyway."

Before he lost his arm was what he meant.

"I personally think you could do a lot better than just selling and shifting furniture," Evangeline declared softly. "But I'll make it possible, if you want to go back to that job."

"I didn't love it," Bucky admitted, "but it beat the – well, it was better than being told to shoot people, or being shot at, or having to worry about being gassed, or tripping over a landmine. Army pays better, but it's a lot more dangerous than shifting furniture. It was a comfortable, solid job. It got me out of the house, kept all the bills paid, and I could afford to take a girl or two dancing on the weekends too."

"Kept you off the streets too, I expect," Evangeline teased.

"Nah," Bucky denied, and shook his head sadly. "Steve's my best friend, and he's a punk. Is, was, always will be. And until he got pumped full of that Super Soldier Serum, he was ninety-pounds wet. Small, weedy, asthma, sinusitis, heart problems, twitchy, and he caught everything. I mean everything. His mother was a nurse, you see. She worked with the people who had this or that disease, always brought a little of whatever it was home with her, and Steve always came down with it. Didn't let anything beat 'im though. Whole world was determined to kick his ass, including just about every guy he met that wasn't me. I was always having to pull him out of it, because he wouldn't run away from a fight, and he wouldn't stay down."

"You care a lot about him, don't you?" Evangeline observed.

"He's practically my little brother," Bucky explained/excused/admitted with a shrug. "When we were kids we used to take the cushions off the couch, lay 'em out on the floor and sleep on 'em. We lived in each other's houses, anything one of us was short on, the other helped out. Even when I was in the trenches, I still worried about how Steve was doing without me there to pull him out when he got himself too deep in."

"I'd better get to work on that new arm for you," Evangeline decided, though she made no effort to move from where she was on the couch, snuggled up beside the sergeant. "If you're going to insist on being there to drag him out of the messes he will no doubt continue to charge into. With Erskine's formula, he can get into much worse than fisticuffs in a back-alley in Brooklyn."

"You're not wrong about Steve," Bucky agreed wryly. "I'm just glad the stuff didn't do to him what it did to Schmitt."

"Mm, Erskine told me a bit about that," Evangeline offered.

"Yeah?"

"You ever hear people talk about how... how a hard-ass is actually a big softy once you get to know them? Or how a pretty face hides a cruel heart? That sort of thing?" she queried.

"Sure," Bucky said with a shrug and a nod.

"Well, Erskine's formula brought that out. He described the effects as 'good becomes great, but bad becomes worse'," Evangeline explained, "and for what it's worth? I think you'd be a prime candidate for the Super Soldier Program."

"You think I'm a good man?" Bucky asked hopefully.

"I think you're a great man," she corrected. "A little busted up right now, but great despite that. My interest in seeing what the formula would do to you is forty-eight percent medical, and forty-seven percent academic, and five percent just plain curious. 'Good' became Captain America, after all. It kind of begs the question over what Erskine's formula does to 'great', don't you think?"

"I dunno," Bucky admitted as he shook his head slowly. "I mean, maybe, but I already went through hell on Zola's cutting table, and Steve said it hurt 'a little', which means 'a lot' for most other folks. It'd be wasted on me anyway. I never wanted to be a soldier in the first place, however good I was at it. Don't really need to be a one-armed Super Soldier."

Evangeline bit her lip nervously as she considered broaching exactly that issue. She hadn't discussed the theory circling in her brain with Erskine, but she didn't think it was completely unfounded.

"And if it grew your arm back?" she pressed tentatively. "I'm not saying it would for certain, but as I understand it, Rogers grew just shy of a foot due to the procedure, at an age where he should have well and truly stopped growing. As a side-effect, the serum fixed all of his listed medical problems and then some. I am still going to work on figuring out how to make the prosthetic arm happen – it would be a great medical advance all the world over if I can make it work like Zola implied it could, if those plans pan out – but..." she trailed off.

Bucky didn't react straight away, and Evangeline didn't push him. It was another option laid out on the table for him. One that was entirely at his discretion to accept or reject.

The record finished playing, and the silence stretched. Eventually, Evangeline slowly drew back and stood.

"It's your choice," she insisted. "Take as long as you need to think about it, I'm just going to start breakfast."

"Okay," Bucky said softly, and managed to tear his gaze away from the middle distance to focus on her. "I... I'll put the book away and pack up the record player, then I'll come join you."


	8. Chapter 8

The problem with Russian weapons designs, Evangeline decided as she continued to pour over the documents and files spread out on the table in front of her, was that they were written in Russian. A language she knew exactly to nothing of. Even German would have been better, and all she knew of that language was _gesundheit_ , that Mister translated to _herr_ , Miss was _frauline_ , and Missus was _frau_. Apart from that, the only word that she'd ever picked up – and she only remembered it at all because it tickled her funny bone – was that _rathaus_ was the German word for the building in which their politics happened. Rat-House. Never had there been a more suitable word for a den of politicians. Her Russian though? Initially non-existent, but now rapidly expanding.

So there she was, pouring over the plans that had flown through the tent-flap a quarter of an hour before lunch, slightly battered from the trip across the better part of two continents in roughly twelve-to-fourteen hours, but otherwise whole... and with a Russian-English translation dictionary at her side. Because translation charms were nothing more than a myth. After all, if they did exist, then it wouldn't have been necessary to employ Barty Crouch senior in the Department of International Co-operation, where his primary strength was that he could speak fluently in more than ten languages.

Yes, she supposed that she could give the plans and files to one of the linguists in Intelligence, but she was surrounded by the inception of a covert organisation. She could practically smell it. The way the Colonel had wanted to hang onto Zola, even with his demonstrated fanaticism to Hydra's cause (to the point of living, where others had simply died), screamed of long-term planning. The kind of long-term planning that involved secret plans, clever tricks, and high levels of paranoia.

In a word: spies.

Evangeline had gotten more than her fill of secret organisations, spies, and lies back in her later Hogwarts years. Yes, some of it had been necessary, she could admit that. She would never agree that all of it had been needed though. Never. Too many people had died specifically because of secrets that _hadn't_ been told.

She closed her eyes, drew in a deep breath through her nose, and banished her should-haves, could-haves, and would-haves. Hind-sight was all well and good, but dwelling on the road already travelled was pointless unless it helped to navigate the road ahead.

At least with Erskine's formula, she was getting a dictation directly from his spirit, and she was getting it in English. Long-winded, complex English, peppered all throughout with appropriately medical and scientific Latin, but she could work with that much more easily and quickly than she could the Russian. She was just grateful that the scientists the plans had been stolen from hadn't worked in some horribly complicated code on top of the rest.

Everything was also hideously complex. Of course, the sort of things being done were impossible, so a hideously complex plan/blueprint/recipe was to be expected. God might be able to just speak the world into being, but humans (even the magical ones) couldn't think of realistically approaching that. Ever. The simplest answer would not always be the most ideal solution, sadly. The simplest answer for Bucky would be to re-attach his own arm. Magic could return separated appendages to their owners, splinching happened often enough and had been a regular accident for those learning to apparate for long enough that a solution had been found a long time ago.

But it had to be the person's own flesh being restored to their person. Evangeline couldn't cut a suitable arm off a dead or dying person, attach it to Bucky, and expect that to work. If that was possible then George wouldn't still be missing an ear, and Moody certainly wouldn't have been hobbling about on a peg before he'd been caught out and snatched up because of it.

Pettigrew's silver hand was... liquid metal (not silver, for all that it looked silver in its molten state) transfigured from the used cauldron, that was linked to both Riddle and Pettigrew through the Dark Mark, animated, and controlled by magical fluctuations (instead of neural synapses) and will. It had been created by Riddle's magic, but maintained by Pettigrew's own magical core.

At least, so far as she could guess. It wasn't like she'd gotten the opportunity to examine it in any great detail. She was going off assumptions based on her current medical knowledge and on what she had seen with her own eyes as a teenager with no goals beyond living to the end of the war, winning it, and killing as many of the enemy as she could along the way. Assumptions that said the feat was not replicable. Especially on a person who lacked a functioning magical core – Bucky actually had a neat little magical... wick, would probably be the best word for it. He had the potential to be magical, but had never triggered it. A sort of 'missing link' between squib and full witch or wizard. Something like the 'hedgewitch' category from fairy-stories.

It wasn't like she wanted to spend the rest of her life transfiguring magical limbs for people anyway, even if she could get them to work without the patient having a magical core to sustain and operate them. Better to figure out a viable design, something a bit more reasonable for everyday use than the weapon that the Russians had come up with, patent it, and then have it manufactured for sale to those who needed it.

There was so much to do. She had to translate all the Russian, yes, and that was a daunting task to begin with, but there was more to it than that. She needed to figure out each limb from each joint, because no two amputations were identical. It was part of why normal prosthetic limbs cost as much as they did, despite a lot of them being really quite basic in both form and function. Okay, she didn't need to do that for Bucky, but for the sake of being comprehensive...

"How's it going?"

Evangeline jumped in surprise and turned in her seat. It was Bucky (of course it was Bucky, at the moment, he was the only person apart from herself able to enter her tent). She'd just been so absorbed in the work and her thoughts that she hadn't heard him. Well, not consciously at least, or he'd have been hit with a stunner already.

"My written Russian is improving in leaps and bounds," she answered with a wry, not wholly pleased (and definitely not amused, because it wasn't funny!) twist to her mouth. "Sorry I've been such a poor hostess."

"You've been busy being a good doctor," Bucky said with a shake of his head, words and actions dismissing and forgiving all at once. "Thought you might like to know, the men have started returning."

"Do they look victorious? Or are these the ones that had to escape a bad situation?" she asked even as she turned away from her work. She needed to get away from the plans for a bit. The words were still swimming before her eyes even now when she wasn't looking at them. Apparently, she'd really needed to move about too, because her spine had been one long series of pops, clicks and cracks as she stood up from the chair. "How long have I been sitting here?" she moaned out.

"I'd say the only reason you're not hungry right now is because I brought you a plate of sandwiches four hours ago, which you seem to have decimated even though it was piled high enough to feed me when I was a bottomless pit of a growing teenager," Bucky answered with an amused smirk as he gestured to the plate of crumbs that sat just passed the piles of paper. "And you'd been working on those plans for about three hours before I brought you the sandwiches."

Evangeline grimaced at the revelation that she'd been sitting at her desk, pouring over schematics, designs, and a language she didn't understand, for seven hours.

"I should make us some dinner," she said.

"That's what the Mess Sergeant is for," Bucky countered with a gentle smile.

"My cooking tastes better than his," Evangeline asserted firmly. It was healthier too. The food in the mess tent was all boiled to death, but then, boiling and frying was the only way they seemed to cook food in this era, and boiling was safer out here on the field. "Besides, I like cooking."

"You don't want to go meet the returning men?" Bucky checked. "They're rolling in with stolen tanks and trucks, cheering the victory."

"And your friend?"

Bucky grinned a wide, happy, contented grin.

"He's here too, safe and sound, and all thanks to you. He was back first, actually. Had to crash Schmitt's plane, apparently. Your portkey meant he could escape the wreckage and we don't need to send out search-parties," he reported.

"And you're not with him now?" Evangeline queried, slightly stunned. She knew how important Rogers was to Bucky. They'd just had that conversation that morning, before the files on her desk had flown through the tent-flap.

"I've already fussed over him enough," Bucky said with a shake of his head. "Made him eat something, got the blow-by-blow. He really is a punk. He finally got himself a date with Agent Carter. They agreed to it over the radio while he was aiming the stupid plane to crash into the ocean."

Evangeline laughed at that.

"It's the first date he'll ever have that I haven't set him up for," Bucky declared, the cant of his lips proud, but the shake of his head a little disbelieving. "And I'm never going to let him forget just how he got it."

"I suppose that means you wormed the details out of him. Do you also plan on following him to make sure it's a successful date?" Evangeline teased.

"Eight o'clock, a week from next Saturday," Bucky confirmed. "They're going dancing at the Stork Club, which should be entertaining. As many double-dates as I've pulled him out on, he's never stayed long enough to get to the dancing part, which left me having to dance with two girls."

"A true hardship, I'm sure," Evangeline quipped with a raised eyebrow and a tucked away smirk, not sincere in the least.

"It's definitely a strange turn-about," Bucky said, the smile falling away to seriousness. "I... Of the two of us, it was always me the dames liked and him they barely saw, however much I tried, and however much I tried to get _him_ to try. Then Agent Carter walked into the bar and it was the other way around. I'm still not entirely sure how to handle that, and without an arm..."

"Maybe the answer, for now, is to let him go on his date to the Stork Club without you, while you go on a date without him somewhere else?" Evangeline suggested, and moved to walk passed him to the kitchen.

"I can see how much work you're putting into both the prosthetic and serum ideas, but I don't think either one would be ready in the time-frame you're suggesting," Bucky pointed out reasonably as he let her pass him, and followed behind her at an easy pace. It was incredible to think that his leg had been broken just a couple of days ago, and now he didn't even need the borrowed walking stick to help him get around.

"You could go on a date as you are," Evangeline said.

"Somehow, I don't think there are a whole lot of dames interested in stepping out with a one-armed sergeant," Bucky pointed out ruefully. "Not that wouldn't be pitying me the whole time, anyway."

"I could think of one," Evangeline mumbled.

Bucky still heard her.

"Yeah," he agreed, and his bright blue eyes darkened a little as they lingered on her back. "Me too, but she's the sort of quality lady that deserves the best. Apparently I'm great, but I'm not the best, and I know it. I hear she's working on a serum that could put me in the way of maybe being the man she deserves though. Think I'll got for it. See how that works out for me."

Evangeline smiled to herself at that.

~oOo~

"Would you care to repeat that?" Colonel Philips said, all at once an order, a request, and a demand, as he set his hands on his hips and his most disbelieving expression on his face.

"I want to put Sergeant James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes through the Super Soldier Process," Evangeline enunciated carefully, to make absolutely sure that both of the men sitting opposite her had heard and understood what she had just said. Bucky wasn't present. He was keeping Rogers and Carter distracted for a bit, regaling the Agent with embarrassing stories about his best friend.

It wasn't that the pair weren't trusted not to know, but Carter would have told Rogers, and Bucky didn't want to get his best friend's hopes up – just in case it didn't work out.

"That's what I thought you said."

"But without Doctor Erskine, we have no formula," Howard Stark pointed out reasonably. "Captain Rogers donated some of his blood after the procedure, but we've found no way to synthesise the formula from it yet. I can set up the equipment, but it doesn't mean a thing without the Doc's serum."

Evangeline reached into a pocket of her coat and pulled out a stoppered vial of glowing blue formula. Erskine's recipe. While everyone else celebrated bringing down the Hydra Base where Schmitt had been, and took a couple of days off before they got on with the business of hunting down the scientific bases that Evangeline and mapped out for them (to say nothing of doing their fair share of fighting the rest of the war as well), she'd been working the whole time.

Evangeline had settled into a bit of a routine. Prosthetic plans in the morning, serum in the afternoon. Bucky generally joined her in her tent mid-morning, put a record on, and settled down across from her with one of her many, many books. She might throw out a question or two about what he wanted the arm capable of in the morning, but otherwise they were just together. Bucky made sure she stopped for lunch, which would sometimes be sandwiches he made, and would sometimes be soup that she'd put on the stove while she made her breakfast. After lunch, he went back to reading, and Evangeline switched out the papers she poured over. She occasionally took blood samples from him to run tests, but again, it was mostly reading and not talking. Just sitting near each other while they did their own thing.

Of course, Bucky was just as content to spend a few minutes here and there throughout the day just watching Evangeline as she worked. He had to limit himself to how much he watched her though, because being watched for too long made her twitchy.

When seven o'clock rolled around, Bucky put his book back on whatever shelf he'd pulled it from, pulled Evangeline away from her desk again, and dragged her out to the mess tent for dinner. The food there was never as good as her cooking, but it got her out for a little while, which was just as much the point as feeding her was. After dinner they often returned to her tent and settled down on her couch together for a couple of hours. They would just talk, about her life and about his, before he went back to his own tent for the night. Some nights though, they'd join Steve and the Commandos when they got leave to go into the nearby town, where the destination was always the pub for food that was slightly better than the mess offered, as well as drinks, carousing, and a few hands of cards.

Evangeline didn't drink anywhere near enough to get drunk though, and she knew better than to try and match even the lightweights of the group drink for drink. She got quiet and solemn when she was drunk, and she didn't want to ever bring down their cheer. She had produced a bottle of Odgen's Finest Firewhiskey one night though, and challenged all patrons to take a shot. Rogers, who supposedly couldn't get drunk any more, had swayed in a very promising manner (at least, if the aim was to get the man drunk) after taking his turn.

To be completely fair though, she had poured him a double, and there was a bit of magic in Firewhiskey, which made it all the more potent.

"Is that what I think it is?" Colonel Philips asked carefully, his eyes fixed on the vial and its contents, and his words pulling Evangeline back from where her thoughts had wandered.

"If you think it's Doctor Erskine's formula, then yes," Evangeline confirmed. Recreating a highly complex formula from exact notes that didn't have to be translated was a lot easier than having to first translate notes, and then modify the plans based on what she did and didn't want the cybernetic prosthetic arm to do. Also what Bucky did and didn't want the arm to do as well.

It had been the better part of half a year since Bucky had agreed to try the serum for an answer to his one-armed state, but they'd also kept half-a-mind to the possibility of his needing the prosthetic arm despite the procedure. Both projects were slow going. Erskine's formula was _easier,_ yes, but that by no stretch made it _easy_ – and she'd also had to make sure that Erskine's formula wouldn't react badly to Zola's meddling, which had meant taking a few pints of Bucky's blood and running tests.

Lots and lots of tests.

For comparison's sake: Erskine's formula was learning to comprehensively communicate in three different-but-related languages well enough to have deep and meaningful exchanges in all of them – and tweaking it to not react poorly to what was already in Bucky was adding in another two languages. The prosthetic, on the other hand (not to be pun-y) was more like translating nuclear physics, bio-chemical engineering, and every aspect of medicine ever into three vastly different languages, without a reference guide to make sure everything was correct, and having to use iambic pentameter, just because it wasn't hard enough already.

Not that anybody not involved in the process understood that at all.

"Wow," Howard Stark breathed, eyes wide. He at least had an inkling of understanding, having been involved with Erskine before, as well as being the person to examine what Axis-forces technology came in after the battles.

"I'm not going to ask how you managed it," Colonel Philips decided after a moment of just silently staring at the vial. "You were right about those bases, and that camp, and Schmitt's cousin. You made time spin backwards. You made it so that Rogers was transported out of a plane crash back to camp on a word. What I am going to ask is why you want to stick that into a man who's missing an arm."

"For that reason exactly," Evangeline stated plainly. "As I understand it, Captain Rogers grew almost a foot due to the procedure. That is a very extensive muscular and skeletal change. I'm not certain, but I believe that it could, just maybe, cause Sergeant Barnes' arm to grow back."

"And if it doesn't?" Howard asked, cautiously playing devil's advocate.

"I'm still working on figuring out the blueprints for the prosthetic as well," Evangeline assured the man. "The formula just got finished first."

"If it works, you think we could put all our amputees through this process?" Colonel Philips suggested curiously.

"I don't know," Evangeline answered, but the way she shook her head as she said so wasn't encouraging. "I honestly wouldn't suggest it at all for most people though. The essential principle of Doctor Erskine's formula is always going to be one of the amplification. Good becomes great, but bad becomes worse, to use his phrasing."

"Meaning we could have another Red Skull on our hands by accident," Howard registered, "and that's if it even does work to grow Barnes' arm back. If it doesn't, then that line of discussion is moot anyway."

"Except that the Doc here is also working on a real fancy prosthetic, right?" Colonel Philips interjected. "Could you imagine a team of Super Soldiers, each one with an arm or a leg that doubles as a weapon, ploughing through the Axis' forces?"

"No," Evangeline cut off firmly. "Because, so far as I can understand from the stolen blueprints I'm in the middle of translating and working from, each limb will have to be custom made and fitted for each person, then specifically calibrated for use while it's being fitted. This limb will be superior to any other prosthetic out there, but it will also take at least three months to build and another week on top of that to... to install on a person. To fit and finesse it to the individual who is going to be living with it for the rest of their lives."

"So we'd have to find men who first of all, fit the model of a 'good man', which is hard enough to find in the first place, especially in the army, because we don't win wars with niceness," Colonel Philips started listing off, clearly on a grumble. "Then if we find one who is an amputee and willing to go through the Super Soldier process, which was neither easy nor cheap the first time around, and it doesn't make any lost limbs grow back, then it will be another three months and change to get them the new limb, which I expect will be as difficult and expensive as the Super Soldier program was in the first place."

"That sounds about right," Evangeline agreed.

"Great," Colonel Philips complained as he sank back into his chair. "Then why am I letting you do it to Sergeant Barnes?" he demanded ruefully.

"You're not paying me to do the research on the prosthetic," Evangeline reminded. "I'll get my name on the patent when I'm done, that's my prize for that. You're letting me put Sergeant Barnes through the Super Soldier process to find out if it will re-grow lost limbs at all. We know the formula works in general thanks to Captain Rogers. I am potentially, tentatively willing to supply more formula for more soldiers for as long as this war lasts, provided that men can be found who meet the criteria – and by that I mean my criteria and Doctor Erskine's, not your criteria, Colonel."

Philips sighed in frustration. As Evangeline had pointed out, there wasn't really anything to lose – the loss had already happened when Erskine was shot. Now that they had the formula in hand again, well, the original plans to have an army of Super Soldiers could be tentatively put back on the table.

He agreed to give it the go-ahead anyway – on the proviso that, if it worked, Barnes was reinstated to active duty, rather than only taking part in the war from the logistics chair.

Evangeline countered that, in that case, it would be up to Barnes if he still wanted to go through with the procedure.


	9. Chapter 9

Steve said his procedure had happened in Brooklyn. The very neighbourhood they grew up in, even. The people in charge weren't going to fly Stark back to the States for the procedure though, not least because most of the people in charge weren't being told about this. It was also too important to have Stark where he was, a metaphorical half-league back from where the weapons were needed. Besides, when Colonel Philips had told Stark to pack everything up, he'd packed up the lab where Steve had undergone the procedure.

The materials from that lab had been melted down and re-purposed. It no longer existed except as a few memories and a set of blueprints.

Bucky's procedure would be happening in one of the bunkers used by the Strategic Scientific Reserve. Yes, he'd decided to go with the option that would send him back out into the killing fields he hated so much. It was a shot at getting his own arm back, rather than having to have a prosthetic that would be stared at, however great that prosthetic might be. Besides, he did need to keep an eye on Steve. The punk had been getting into all sorts of scrapes without Bucky there to watch his back – the rest of the Howling Commandos did a good job picking up the slack, but Bucky's speciality had been watching Steve's back, and none of the other guys did it quite the same way. Probably because they'd never hauled his skinny ass out of a back alley.

The lab and the machines had been built all over again, and there was a line-up of ten power-generators that had been taken from enemy camps that had been successfully put out of commission. It was cheaper than requisitioning from supplies. The camps were going to be attacked anyway, might as well benefit from it.

They'd certainly been stealing enough weapons from Hydra with every base they'd attacked that no-one in the company so much as blinked at the standing request from Colonel Philips to steal any damn thing they could get their hands on. The only conditional was that they wait until after the enemy was dead or chased off before they started raiding enemy supplies, which was common sense, really.

Another difference between this set-up and the one in Brooklyn, this time there would be no observation booth. Just the people involved in the project and had a job to do. In fact, no one who didn't need to be there, didn't know exactly what was going on in that bunker at that moment. This meant that Colonel Philips was dealing with intelligence reports in his office in another bunker, while Steve and Agent Carter were out on their a date. The punk was finally learning how to dance, and how to talk to women. The way they were going, it looked like the punk's first girl was also going to be his only one, unless something terminal happened. Which sadly wasn't out of the picture, since the war was still going strong.

"If this does to me what it did to Steve, I'm gonna need new clothes," Bucky quipped thoughtfully to Evangeline as he watched Stark and his bevy of busybodies doing their final systems checks, a faint smirk pulling at his lips.

"Levels are stable and one-hundred percent," Stark called over. "We're as ready as we can get for this."

"That's your cue," Evangeline told Bucky with a smile.

Bucky had talked to Steve about his own procedure, so he knew that meant he had to strip off everything but his pants and climb onto the bed/table/sarcophagus thing.

"Can I back out?" Evangeline asked, her voice wistful and her bright green eyes focused on Bucky's chest. "I don't really know if I want to mess with something so pretty."

Bucky couldn't help but laugh at that. Apparently being strictly relegated to the planning part of the war for more than half a year hadn't hurt him too much. Not more than having already lost an arm, at any rate.

"Well, I'll pray that the serum leaves your looks alone, gives you back your arm, and makes you all super strong and fast without being obvious about it," Evangeline teased, then moved away from him and got down to business. The serum vials were installed into the apparatus, the pads for the micro-injections placed, and then the great green metal pod closed was around him.

Stark called out the levels, a nurse kept an eye on vital signs, and Bucky screamed in pain at seventy percent, just as Steve had done.

"Bucky!?" Evangeline called frantically. She hadn't been there for the first procedure. She worried for him.

Bucky bit off his scream.

"I'm okay, Doll!" he called, a little desperately, clearly in pain despite the words. "I got this!"

Evangeline needed to hear it even if it was a lie though.

"Eighty," Stark called, somewhat calmly. He'd been through this once before, he had some idea of how it went. "Ninety. One-hundred percent."

The little window in the pod would have been a beacon if it had been above ground. No black-out curtains would have been sufficient to keep it hidden. There were no windows in the bunker though, so it was only those present having to squint.

Just as before, Stark's machines started to spark under the strain, and ten long seconds after hitting full-power, it was over. The pod was opened, and every person present stared.

Evangeline snapped out of it first and rushed to Bucky's side, Stark not far behind – he knew that Bucky would be a bit legless, and the first step down from the pod would be the trickiest to co-ordinate.

"Bucky?" she checked, even as she shamelessly ran a hand up his torso and pulled a hand over her shoulder.

Stark got the other one, and they helped him down.

"It worked," Bucky breathed, stunned and short on breath.

"It did," Evangeline confirmed with a grin.

"I know it did before with Rogers, but this... I still can't believe it, but it actually worked," Stark re-confirmed in wonder. He'd thought he'd been shocked enough when Steve stepped out of the pod eleven inches taller and with bulging muscles sticking out everywhere.

Bucky didn't look like that.

He was chorded, wiry, lean and smooth. Muscled and toned, yes, but not bulging. He was a little taller, just a couple of inches, enough that he'd be the taller of himself and Steve again, even if only a little bit. Even with the changes though, his general physique and proportions appeared to be roughly the same as they had been before the procedure. The big deal was, of course, that he had two arms again.

"Come on, I want you on a chair for a quick physical," Evangeline instructed as she steered both men towards a standard wooden upright. "I need to know everything is working properly. How do you feel?"

"Kinda like I just took a sip of your Firewhiskey," Bucky admitted, and sat a little heavily in the chair Evangeline forced him down into. "A bit groggy, little tired, but the energised kind of tired that comes from a really good long run, you know? Not aching at all," he recited when he saw her pull out her stethoscope and start warming it. "Which is weird, considering the way it hurt while I was in there."

"Breathe deeply for me," Evangeline requested as she placed the buds of the stethoscope into her ears and the plate to Bucky's chest. "In for the count of three, hold for three, out for three -"

"Three times?" Bucky suggested with a smile, but obediently started taking deep breaths.

Evangeline moved her stethoscope to a different position and calmly requested "Again."

The stethoscope was pulled from her ears and left to rest against her chest. She checked his pupils next, then his ears, and finally reflexes – and particularly the reflexes and sensations of the arm that had grown back while he was in the pod.

"Good," she finally approved. "Great. Better than that, even," she declared, and a smile claimed her features.

"How bad am I gonna need those new clothes?" Bucky asked with a slightly dopey smile of his own.

"That depends on how much you can let down the hems of your trousers," Evangeline countered cheekily.

From behind her, Stark chuckled.

"Just letting hems down won't be enough. I'll get you sorted out, Barnes," he promised easily, smirk and moustache twitching together. "It looks like it's only a couple of inches all over, and you've gone from six-two to six-nine. Shouldn't be too hard. Any requests for changes to your uniform while I'm at it?"

"An officer's insignia," Evangeline suggested, quick as a whip. "His Prisoner of War Medal is long overdue, to say nothing of his Purple Heart, and while we're on the subject: the Silver Star, the Bronze Star Medal, and the Medal of Honour too, please? If America were still part of the Commonwealth, I would recommend the Victoria Cross as well. I think he's earned that sort of recognition at the very least, don't you, Mr Stark?"

"Sure," Stark agreed, only a little stunned by the short tirade the lovely lady doctor had just given voice to, "but you're talking to the wrong man for all that stuff. I'm just a civilian weapons contractor."

"The gear I have for missions is fine, Stark," Bucky said, and shook his head. "So long as it fits."

"Call me Howard," the other man offered. "I'll, ah, I'll get everybody else out, let you two have your moment."

"So... I know this doll-faced bloke," Evangeline started with a coy smile. "He's real sweet to me, but I haven't been able to convince him to take me dancing yet, and I've been trying for months."

"Guy needs to be convinced to take a classy lady like you dancing?" Bucky played along, a smirk of his own creeping up his face. She hadn't called him that since the day she'd brought him back to base camp after she'd found him. He didn't blush this time though. "Must be an idiot."

Evangeline shook her head in denial.

"He's a lot smarter than I think anybody gives him credit for," she protested. "Him included. He's stubborn though. Keeps on saying how it wouldn't be fair to me, for him to take me dancing while he's only got one arm," she complained lightly.

"If you're not using two hands when you're dancing, then you're not doing it right," Bucky said in solemn agreement – just not with Evangeline. "I'll bet this guy of yours just wanted everything to be perfect when you two finally stepped out together."

"I could be waiting forever for him to come to his senses and realise I don't care if he's got all his limbs or not," Evangeline pointed out.

"Well, I know this lady doctor who just figured out a way it was possible for some folks to get back limbs they lost," Bucky suggested. "Maybe going through that will help him feel like he's worthy of you. You're pretty amazing, you know."

Evangeline shook her head.

"He'll have the girls falling over themselves to be the one on his arm," she said. "He'll forget all about me."

"Anyone who could forget about you really is an idiot," Bucky swore earnestly.

"What about you?" Evangeline diverted. "Got a sweetheart waiting for you?"

"I dunno," Bucky admitted freely. "I mean, I've got a lady I'm sweet on, that lady doctor I mentioned in fact, but I don't know if she feels the same way about me as I've come to feel about her."

"Any girl who can catch your eye is a lucky one," Evangeline offered softly. "Even if it's just for one dance."

"But I don't want it to be just for one dance," Bucky countered earnestly, "and I'm worried that she'll think that's all I'm willing to give her, because she knows that's what I've given other girls in the past. She's not like all those other girls though."

"What sets this girl apart from all the others?" Evangeline queried in response to the prompting.

"What doesn't? She's funny, and sweet, and so amazingly smart. She's a doctor, you know? Did I say that already? I'd say she's the best doctor this side of the Atlantic, and probably on the other side too. She's a great cook, but she doesn't turn her nose up at my efforts when I have a go... And she's beautiful. She doesn't do herself up like the dames back home, or even Agent Carter and the other dames that hang around the guys in uniforms, but she's got them all beat," Bucky praised.

"Brains and beauty, huh?" Evangeline teased.

"And heart," Bucky added to the list. "She saved my life once. Didn't have to. Didn't know me from Adam at the time, but she saved me, took care of me, helped me get back to the people who'd thought I was dead when I probably should have just stayed lying in bed recovering. She's probably the best thing that's ever happened to me. No, she definitely is."

"Then you should let her know that," Evangeline suggested, her cheeks a little warmer and pinker than usual.

"I should," Bucky agreed. "I will. I know just the place to take her to as well. Steve's talked a bit about the Stork Club. Agent Carter picked it for their first date, and they've gone back there a couple of times, so it's gotta be nice. On the other hand, maybe I'll get lucky and be sent to London for Christmas. I could take her somewhere a bit more ritzy."

"Then what are you waiting for?" Evangeline prompted.

"Now? Some clothes that fit," Bucky teased. "This is the perfect woman we're talking about here. I can't look anything less than my very best for a date with her."

"I could argue that you look really damn good right now," Evangeline pointed out. It wasn't the sort of comment that was really proper in this era, and in general she'd adjusted well to the nineteen-forties standards. She didn't go for pin-curls or lipstick, granted, and she wasn't wearing seamed stockings or drawing a line up the back of her legs to pretend she was. Apart from that she'd settled in well enough, even on the clothes front, because she liked to keep things simple, and some things just didn't change, no matter the decade. Occasionally though, a little bit of how things were done and talked about in the new millennium, the one she'd left behind, slipped through.

Bucky grinned that cheeky, boyish, ever-so-slightly smug grin of his, though without any shirt to hide it, it was possible to see the red creeping up his neck.

Evangeline blushed hotly as she realised what had just escaped her mouth.


	10. Chapter 10

" _I'm dreaming of a white Christmas..._ " crooned the woman who had the microphone, the small band playing sweetly behind her on the small stage at the front of the hall. Bing Crosby had released that record just the year before, but it was already a standard for the season, and being sung by just about everybody who could get their hands on Irving Berlin's original score.

As far as Bucky was concerned, despite the fact that the world was still at war and he was stuck in the middle of it, the Christmas of nineteen-forty-three was the best he'd ever had. He'd had both arms again as of a week earlier, and he had Evangeline Potter pressed up against him as they swayed gently on the dance floor, and just for that day, the war didn't matter.

There was a ceasefire for Christmas, and Bucky had been lucky enough to get leave all the way off in London for the holiday. Of course, where he went, Evangeline went too. As she was still technically a civilian (women couldn't be drafted, they had to volunteer for service, and Evangeline lacked certain vital pieces of paperwork for her to be processed like that), no one could tell her what to do if she didn't let them.

When they'd surfaced from the bunker in the small town where Bucky had gone through the procedure, Colonel Philips had been forced to endure the same tirade Evangeline had treated Howard to. The Colonel had looked Bucky up and down in that considering way he had, then he'd nodded and set aside the bereavement letters in favour of filing paperwork for a promotion and a slew of medals. Colonel Philips must have actually honestly agreed with her. He wasn't a man who let himself be brow-beaten by anybody, but he'd agreed to the medals, the promotion, and had even thrown in some leave. No one who didn't know already would find out until he returned to base camp after Christmas.

Bucky didn't think he needed the medals. He'd gone that long without them, after all. Evangeline had opinions on that sort of thing though – on people getting due and proper recognition – and the only reason she hadn't made a noise about it sooner was because she was so distracted with Erskine's formula and the Russian blueprints.

She'd insisted on similar decorations for all of the Howling Commandos, actually. Falsworth and Dernier, being British and French respectively, were under different army codes which meant different medals, but Evangeline still saw to it that they all got appropriate decorations and ribbons and medals added to their uniforms.

The song ended, and Evangeline lifted her head from where it had been resting on his chest as they danced, the top of her head roughly level with his collar-bone. _White Christmas_ became _I'll be Home for Christmas_.

For the occasion, Evangeline had pulled out some make-up, though from where, Bucky had no idea – and he'd had the time and opportunity to explore her tent and all its hiding places fairly extensively since he'd met her. She had also done up her long, red, naturally curly hair into a few pin-curls around her face, a clearly complicated bun just back from her crown, and left a few smooth ringlets fall down to lightly kiss her shoulders.

Her dress was a warm, light brown. The same colour as the tie that was part of Bucky's dress uniform, in fact, and whatever it was made of, it was softer than anything Bucky had ever touched before in his life. Brown might not seem like a colour for a fancy dress, but Evangeline made it work for her. The light brown was trimmed with dark brown around the sweetheart neckline and the hem, and there were little twinkles of gold in a sweep around the skirt of it. The dress clung in the right places, it draped in the right places, and it swished softly and smoothly around her stockinged legs.

Vaguely, Bucky could remember that night in the bar when Steve had asked him to join a special squad, thinking he'd never seen a woman as put-together as Agent Carter in that red dress of hers, and with eyes only for his best friend. Evangeline on his arm now definitely trumped Agent Carter in the pub back then.

"Merry Christmas, Lieutenant Barnes," she said softly.

"Merry Christmas, Doctor Potter," he answered. "You know, I managed to get my hands on a Christmas present for you. It wasn't easy. There's the way everything is rationed these days, and the fact that you've got pretty much everything you could want already, made it hard to even come up with an idea for what to give you. I figured it out though, and I think you'll like it. At least, I hope you will."

"I have something for you too," Evangeline admitted.

"Doll, you already gave me this," Bucky said, and flexed his left arm a bit, gently squeezed the fingers of the hand he was holding.

"And I intend to make sure you keep it," Evangeline returned, voice low so they wouldn't be overheard, but firm all the same. "The formula will help you heal faster, will make it harder to hurt you in general, but you're not invulnerable. If you lose another limb, that's it. It was the activation process that sparked the regeneration. It won't work a second time."

"I get it," Bucky soothed, and tugged her back close to him again. "I'll be careful."

"Good, because while no one minds me when I up-sticks and follow you from base camp to HQ in town, or across the channel to London, not even Agent Carter would let me onto the battle-field proper until after the fighting is mostly done," Evangeline stated, and nestled in under his chin.

"Doctors are generally kept away from where the explosions happen, even the ones that were soldiers before they learned how to doctor," Bucky pointed out gently, aware that his dame was no fragile little flower, but a fighter, and a strong one. At the same time though, that didn't mean she didn't like being taken care of by someone who actually cared about her. "Especially doctors that successfully recreated the miracle serum that the Allied forces feared Erskine had taken with him to his grave," he added, his tone more teasing.

"Kind of a short list, that one," Evangeline pointed out with an amused hum.

"You're all of it," Bucky agreed with a chuckle of his own.

There was a smattering of applause around the floor as the song finished. All but a very few soldiers on the floor in heartfelt agreement with the sentiment expressed in the song. None of them would be home for Christmas that year, but they could hope for next year. Evangeline knew that, if history ran roughly the same way as it had in her dimension of origin, then it would be just a bit more than a year-and-a-half before the war finally ended, roughly. She couldn't remember the exact dates, but she was pretty sure the war had ended in the second half of forty-five.

The pair, couple really, parted to join in the applause, and when the band started up again with _O Holy Night_ , Bucky gently tugged Evangeline off the dance floor and over to their table. He wanted to give her the gift that had been burning a hole in his pocket all night. Besides, that was a song for church, or carolling in the old folk's homes and the kids wards of hospitals. He didn't mind slow-dancing to _White Christmas_ or _I'll be Home for Christmas_ , but he didn't dance to church songs. It felt vaguely sacrilegious.

Evangeline picked up her purse from her chair as she sat down, and pulled out a small square wrapped up in white paper, tied with a bit of green ribbon.

Bucky produced his own little parcel from his pocket, wrapped up just the same way.

With shy, slightly nervous smiles, they exchanged gifts. They pulled the ribbons free, peeled back the paper, and opened the little card boxes that were inside.

James Buchanan Barnes couldn't fight the grin that spread over his face, didn't bother to stifle his chuckles as he shook his head in amusement. There, staring up at him from within the little box, was a medallion with a deer – a _buck_ , antlers and all – stamped out in detail upon it. There was a loop of ball-chain through the hole at the top, just like the chain that held his dog-tags. The shiny little medallion was clearly meant to hang from the chain that was around his neck already, and like that chain, not be taken off.

Bucky frowned slightly as he examined the details of the medallion he'd been gifted – and there were more details on it than there were on the coins that used to jingle in his pockets. There was strange writing around the outside and on the back as well. Not German or Russian – he was well and truly familiar with both by now, what with helping out in the strategic division and packing away the notes Evangeline worked on each day, just so that she would be forced to stop and eat – but while some of the characters looked familiar, the words they spelled (if they spelled words at all) were completely foreign to him.

"What language is this?" he asked curiously. "Wait, is there more than one? Because this doesn't look like that..." he mused as he turned the medallion over a couple of times in his fingers.

"There's some Norse runes, and some Latin," Evangeline supplied. "They're protection charms."

"Will they even work for me?" Bucky questioned, not doubting, but curious. "I know my not having a magical core made a difference to how you were approaching the prosthetic before it was confirmed that the serum worked."

"You can still get hurt," Evangeline explained, worry for him clear in her bright green eyes, "but in the event of a bomb, you'll be blown back whole, for sure, rather than blown into little pieces. You won't have to worry about gas attacks, or drowning, or even choking on smoke while you wear that either. Most magicals back in my old world would use charms for these things, but you can't. I had to figure out how to make those wand spells into runic protections so that they would work for you, but I did it."

Bucky shook his head again.

"When?" he asked, stunned by the amount of work that had clearly gone into this.

"After you went back to your tent with Rogers in the evenings," Evangeline admitted with a sheepish little smile. "Do you like it?"

"I love it, Doll," he assured her. "I'd put it on right now, but my tags are underneath everything right now. First chance I get though," he promised with a grin.

"Good," Evangeline breathed in relief. "Now tell me about this," she begged sweetly, eagerly, and picked up the shining little trinket that had been Bucky's choice of a gift to her between forefinger and thumb.

Bucky chuckled, shook his head, and took it from her. He also wrapped his hand around her wrist, and pulled it towards him. It was just a small silver locket, about an inch long and the shape of a heart, with angel wings carefully detailed on the front of it, and the date etched on the back. Bucky smiled to himself as he clicked the locket onto Evangeline's charm bracelet between her tiny Rod of Asclepius medallion and her shrunken trunk.

"I actually asked Stark to make it for me," Bucky admitted, just a little ruefully as he ran a finger over the locket, and his thumb over Evangeline's pulse. "Since I couldn't really get to a jewellery store, you know?"

Getting leave to London wasn't something that happened a lot for the Howling Commandos, even when one of them had been injured, and the small town where HQ was bunkered down might have had a pub and a couple of good places to go dancing, but it didn't have a jeweller.

"Is there anything in it already?" Evangeline asked, but she didn't take her wrist back to pop the locket open and check for herself.

"No," Bucky denied with a shake of his head. "I talked Stark into leaving the inside plain. I wasn't sure what to put in it, and I didn't want any of his hare-brained ideas thrown in either."

"Then I'll think about it," Evangeline decided softly, but with that distant, speculative tone in her voice, like she already had a vague idea. "Thank you, Bucky. It's perfect."

~oOo~

"Doctor Potter?"

Evangeline looked up from the papers she'd been going over for Colonel Philips. She and Bucky had proven that Erskine's formula was even more of a miracle than had been previously supposed, and he wanted at least a squad-worth of Super Soldiers. They weren't going to be kept as a squad though. Based on how effective Rogers had proven to be in the field up until this point, the new Super Soldiers would be handed over to other officers in various different strategic points throughout the war-front. Bucky was the only Super Soldier who wasn't being sent off on his own to a different regiment.

In any event, she'd been passed a pile of personnel files and medical reports with the instructions to please pick out at least five men by the end of the month who she thought would be compatible with the program. They'd get transfer orders, she'd get to meet them, they'd serve with the division for a while so that she could get a proper, personal feel for them – and reports on them from people she knew and trusted as well.

Then she'd have to pick someone. Colonel Philips wanted at least one new Super Soldier shipped out to a different part of the war every two months, but he'd take what he could get. He was (finally) beginning to understand how not-exactly-consistent the serum was, even if it was complete and had produced very impressive results. Of course, there was also the issue of the process burning out the stolen generators, so they had to be either fixed or replaced before they could put another person through the process.

Personnel files didn't leave the administrative tent though, so she was, for once, doing her important reading where everybody and anybody could walk up and interrupt her. And someone had.

"Captain Rogers," she answered, and tucked her pencil behind her ear. "What can I do for you? You're just recently back from a lengthy reconnaissance mission, aren't you? I hope you and the men weren't injured."

"We all came through it just fine, Ma'am. Actually, I was wondering if there was anything I could do for you," Rogers said with a truly boyish, hopeful little smile. "I want to thank you somehow, for all that you've done for Bucky."

Evangeline's work on Erskine's formula had been kept strictly confidential while she was working on it. Bucky had been the only one to know she was working on it at all until she'd approached Philips and Stark. Rogers hadn't been told. Bucky had managed to ask his friend about the procedure without letting on that he'd been in line to go through it himself.

Rogers hadn't known about the project, certainly hadn't known about the success of the project, until Bucky had come back from his leave. At which point, with barely enough time for a round of congratulatory claps on the back (and certainly no time for celebratory drinks) they'd been straight off on another mission.

"I didn't do it for you, Captain Rogers," Evangeline pointed out. "I don't even particularly care about what the formula can do for the war. It's playing at being God, and the first step down a slippery slope if not very strictly and very carefully regulated. This formula is essentially telling the human race at large that _we aren't good enough_. Hitler is building his master race through the elimination of those who don't fit his mould. The formula is like an answer to that, only we're altering people instead of eliminating them."

"I understand that Ma'am," Rogers assured her, though the concept she'd laid out before him clearly also discomforted him. "My point stands though. You gave Bucky his arm back. His own arm, rather than just some fancy prosthetic."

"I'm still working on that fancy prosthetic," Evangeline pointed out. "Not every amputee is going to get the serum, after all," she added with a significant gesture to the files spread around about her on the table. She even, very deliberately, set the file she'd still been holding down on the 'rejected' pile.

"I understand that too, Ma'am," Rogers said. "But Bucky... He's my best friend, Ma'am. I can never thank you enough for what you did, but I'd really like to try. Please."

Evangeline considered him for a moment, and considered what she might want that he, and he alone, could do for her. When the answer occurred to her, she smiled.

"Captain Rogers, do you recall the day I said that I could play back Zola's life from his perspective, projected like a movie onto a screen?" she asked him.

Rogers nodded hesitantly, not sure where she was going with this and apparently suddenly nervous.

"I want to borrow a couple of memories from you," Evangeline declared softly. "I know what he looked like when I fished his broken body out of a frozen river. I know what he looks like after the serum. I don't know what he looked like before that, and black-and-white photographs don't really do justice to him, I think."

Rogers nodded. He was only a little less nervous, but he was no less willing than he had been when he walked into the administrative tent in the first place.

"How's it work?" he asked.

Evangeline conjured a glass vial with a flick of her wand. Rogers had already seen her conjure a chair, after all. Not that his having seen her do similar before made his reaction now any less entertaining. The two of them hadn't interacted much, so he wasn't as accustomed to her magic as Bucky was.

"Focus on a memory you're willing to let me see," Evangeline instructed. "Try to recall as much detail as you possibly can... and relax. It's not going to hurt."

"I remember you also said you lobotomised Zola," Rogers countered.

"That was on purpose," Evangeline replied blandly. "I took everything from him and I wasn't wholly gentle about it. I am only going to borrow a single memory from you, and I will return it no later than tomorrow."

Rogers closed his eyes.

"Alright," he said.

Evangeline lightly touched her wand to Rogers' temple, and when she saw silver begin to glow at the tip, she smoothly, gently, slowly pulled her wand from his brow. A glowing silver string followed, flowed out after the wand, until it eventually came completely free. Evangeline dropped the collected memory into the conjured vial, conjured a cork to stopper it safely within, and tucked the vial into a pocket.

"That's it," she said.

Rogers peeked an eye open.

"That's it?" he repeated.

"That's it," she re-confirmed. "Have a nice day, Captain Rogers. I'll see you some time tomorrow to return this to you."

"Er, ah, yes Ma'am."

Evangeline returned to the reports Colonel Philips had given her, but after dinner she retreated to her tent quickly.

Pensieve memory projection wasn't difficult. Not really. The reason that wizards and witches continued to stick their heads into pensieves for so long was that, simply speaking, wizards were lazy and stupid, while witches were not in general permitted to do all that much, usually because of senior male members of the family, but occasionally because of sexist prejudices.

It was a very patriarchal, elitist, prejudiced society, and despite civil wars over a whole lot of matters, not particularly inclined to change. Hence why it was generally called 'the wizarding world', even though wizards were only about a... quarter? Maybe a third? …Probably more like a fifth really... Of the total population of the greater magical community that fell under the general heading previously given.

Enchanting a pensive in the first place, that was more difficult. They were, in a way, the rich-wizard's photo album. Photography was for the common, the masses, and the media. The rich had pensieves and interactive oil paintings that held the knowledge and personalities of those people who sat for them.

Evangeline was really quite glad that Susan Bones had taken the time to figure out how to get pensieves to project the memories placed in them. Her fellow red-head had done it because she wanted to be able to use penseives in the judicial process, and being the niece of the late director of the DMLE (to say nothing of her position as the Last Bones, like Evangeline was the Last Potter) had allowed her that opportunity.

With the memory projected onto a plain white wall, full of colour and life, Evangeline conjured a tripod and set her camera on it. Aim, zoom, and focus had to be adjusted; the framing of the memory she was attempting to photograph had to be taken into account; and even if it would be a 'wizarding' photograph, which moved a little after development, the right moment had to be waited for as well.

Just like regular photography.

She watched the memory that Rogers had given her through twice before she picked the moment she wanted. She bent down behind the camera, watched through the view-finder, and when that moment came, she pressed down on the shutter button, taking the picture with a loud _click_.

Evangeline collected up the memory from Rogers back into a new vial, one that wasn't conjured this time, just in case he got called out before she could return the memory to him. For a while, she stared at the now-blank wall, then she focused on one of her own memories, pulled it, and set it to play like a movie short. She didn't need to watch this memory play out to know the moment she wanted to photograph.

Developing photographs wasn't something she'd ever done before, in all honesty. _Creevey Captures_ , a new business that had started up after the war, had always been more than willing to serve any and all of her photographic needs. She had the books that explained how it was done, though she could only guess at why Sirius had owned such books. Probably yet another a rebellion against his mother. Whatever the reason, it was fortunate that the ingredients needed to make the required potion were common enough that she had them all stocked in bulk in her potions lab. Thankfully, she also had the skills to make the potion on her own, even if she'd had to hire a tutor to get her through the potions requirements for her Healer studies.

Evangeline cut down the paper she wanted the photographs on so that they'd slot neatly into her locket, then set the papers and the frames of film into individual dishes to develop. An hour later, she levitated the papers out, washed them quickly in a second potion, and watched as the images developed. The papers were washed in a third potion, then had drying charms cast over them both before she slipped them into the locket on her charm bracelet.

For a moment she just gazed down at the two images, faces smiling and shifting comfortably within their small frames. It was probably the least magical item on her charm bracelet, technically speaking, and definitely the most frivolous. Evangeline could honestly say that she didn't care. She loved it.


	11. Chapter 11

Two long, lean, chorded arms slid around her waist from behind, and the only reason Evangeline didn't have her wand in hand and pressed against the jugular of the person to whom the arms belonged was because a subconscious part of her brain had heard the footsteps coming and taken a quick peek over her shoulder before he reached her. He could come and go from a room and leave sandwiches behind and she wouldn't consciously register him, but she would definitely eat the sandwiches he left for her. She'd do it on autopilot too.

But even after so many years, her paranoia was still a powerful thing. See exhibit A: the charm bracelet that held all of her worldly possessions in a shrunken trunk, her godfather's motorcycle also shrunken down but not in the trunk so that she could make a quicker get-away, a cage for any and all prisoners, and a teeny, tiny, pure-silver ward-stone equivalent.

Yes, even with the tent set up and with all her stuff in its place in the tent, it was also all in the trunk. Kinda. Anti-theft magic and security spells meant that if she wasn't in her tent for more than two hours, everything would disappear from inside the tent and reappear inside her trunk. It was the same essential principle that led to the material possessions of dead people winding up in their Gringotts vaults for distribution upon the reading of wills.

The items had to be keyed first, of course, but it was an easy enough spell to do. Evangeline had learned it in her fourth year. Barty Crouch Junior had been an excellent actor, and a better teacher. As he had been pretending to be Alastor Moody at the time, that meant he taught everybody all the tricks a paranoid old man who lived through a war would consider important. Like not having to worry about important things being stolen or lost just because your life is on the line.

Being back in a war-zone, even if she wasn't a front-line fighter this time, had brought all her battle instincts rushing back. Not that they'd ever completely gone away. There was a reason she carried that clever little cage around on her wrist, after all.

Her subconscious had heard, seen, and recognised the person with his arms around her though, and because of this, Evangeline hadn't gone for her wand. If she'd felt threatened in anyway at all, or wasn't familiar with this person, she'd have already locked their arms to their sides and their legs together.

"Hey," a familiar, smooth, low tenor said, husky and soft by her left ear.

"Hey back," she answered, and wove her fingers in with his.

"So, I was thinkin'," he started.

"Careful," Evangeline teased at once, and twisted her head around so that he could see her smile, could tell that she was poking fun at him just because he'd left an opening for her to do so. "Don't want to hurt yourself."

Bucky huffed out a soft chuckle and shook his head.

"I was thinkin'," he repeated firmly. "I haven't taken you dancing for over a month."

"Well, you have been busy," Evangeline defended him. "I hear there's a war going on."

"I got a week's leave, starting tomorrow," Bucky said. "I know you're still probably gonna be working from breakfast 'til dinner, but after dinner, I want to take you dancing every night. I want to take you out to dinner at a nice place least once as well."

Evangeline untwisted herself and wiggled her shoulders a little so that her back was as snuggled into his chest as she could get it. She focused on the feeling of his thumbs tracing tiny circles over the what they could reach of her hands, and silently just revelled in his warmth and presence.

"I'd like that," she agreed softly.

A gentle squeeze was enough to convey his joy and gratitude in regards to her positive answer, then he changed the subject.

"How's it going for you, anyway?" he asked. "I think you're thinner than when I left," he added, a hint of worrying disapproval in his voice.

"I've been eating," she promised. "I'm not thinner because I'm losing weight, I'm trimmer, because I'm exercising more. I wasn't ever unfit, but I was getting a little soft from so much sitting around all the time."

"So, what, you've been joining the men for callisthenics every morning?" Bucky joked.

"No," Evangeline answered with a laugh. "While you and Captain Rogers were gone, I joined Agent Carter for callisthenics in the evenings."

"... Huh."

"And I've finished looking over the first batch of files Colonel Philips gave me," Evangeline said, changing the subject while staying on it. Bucky had asked how things had been going with her, after all. "The unit will be getting the first transfers soon. The forms have been filled in and sent off. Orders are filtering through... and then I'll have five candidates for the Super Soldier Program to meet, test, and examine, and that's if they haven't been killed in action between my getting their files and them arriving here."

Actually, the _real_ first batch for consideration had been the rest of the Howling Commandos, but they all enjoyed being able to get drunk now and then, and were acutely aware that the Super Soldier metabolism ruled out so much as tipsy, or even slightly buzzed. There were a great many benefits to outweigh that slight downside, but as excellent as all the men were in that specialised unit, most of them... either missed the mark for Erskine's criteria, or just plain didn't want to lose the joy of drinking.

Much to the Colonel's disappointment.

"Any of the men here being transferred out?" Bucky asked, curious.

"No," Evangeline lamented softly. "But Private Hodge has finally learned some manners."

"How'd you manage that?" Bucky laughed out.

"It was a combined effort with Agent Carter," Evangeline demurred.

"How 'combined' was this effort?" Bucky pressed, a smirk on his face as he squeezed her just a little closer.

"She broke his nose and I kicked him in the balls," Evangeline admitted in a petulantly proud mutter.

"I knew my classy lady wasn't a delicate flower," Bucky damn-near crowed with pride. "Couldn't have happened to a more deserving -" he cut himself off. "Guy."

"I believe the correct term for people like him is 'arse-hole'," Evangeline corrected wryly.

Bucky laughed.

~oOo~

About the same time as the transfers arrived for their chance at becoming Super Soldiers, a troop of Canadians moved into the area. They're only going to be around for a month. It's a rest-stop for them before they launch back into the thick of things. The base camp for the Strategic Scientific Reserve isn't exactly a holiday, but because of the specific targets they've got, their camp is strategically located: near a town for fast communications, but not in it, because the men have to be ready to move out at any time, and living out of a bag, sleeping on a camp cot, is more conducive to the correct frame of mind for that sort of thing.

The trouble was, Americans and Canadians only got along about fifty percent of the time. Sure, they're neighbours and allies, but Canada is still part of the British commonwealth, whereas America had gone through a civil war to leave it – and then there were opinions on which sports were superior, and who could out-drink who.

Bucky and Evangeline were sitting at a table at the pub with Carter and Rogers, enjoying a double-date, the ladies laughing as the men took turns telling embarrassing stories about each other, when the the sound of breaking glass shattered the jovial atmosphere and silenced the whole room.

"Looks like Hodge forgot his lesson on manners," Evangeline commented lowly.

Carter nodded, a pinched frown on her face.

"Looks like he's about to get another one," Bucky noted, his voice just as soft.

Hodge had clearly gotten very, very drunk if he thought he could take on two men who, despite the half-drunk bottle of whiskey on their table, looked to be completely sober – and a fair bit more experienced at this war business than Hodge was. One of them had got some broken glass to the face, judging by the small lines of blood that cut across his features. The other had stood up, very deliberately menacing, in response to the drunken attack of Hodge upon his friend.

"Think we should put a stop to it?" Rogers offered quietly. "Before it gets too far, I mean."

"He's drunk, Vic," rang out the voice of the man who had taken some glass to the face. "Go easy on 'im."

"The old man was drunk all the time," the man called 'Vic' answered. "It's not an excuse, and you know it, Jimmy."

"I'm not excusing 'im," 'Jimmy' replied with a shake of his head. "I'm just saying to leave 'im intact enough for his CO to chew him out in the morning when he's hung over."

"Ha!"

Hodge went down very neatly, just crumbled to the floor from a jab to his temple. He might not have been a nice guy, but even bullies gained allies – as Evangeline had first-hand experience of, thanks to her cousin – and the guys Hodge had been drinking with reacted with prejudice to his being put down by a man from the Canadian forces.

"Excuse me," Rogers said, and started to stand as the two Canadians were converged on by five other men.

"I don't think you're needed for this one, Steve," Bucky commented, his eyes flicking between his friend and the fight. "I think those two have got it handled."

They did, too. Every single one of Hodge's friends joined him on the floor in short order.

"That was mildly entertaining," Evangeline offered when it was over.

Rogers blinked at her in shock, while Carter pressed her painted lips together to keep from so easily showing her own amused smile.

Bucky chuckled and shook his head at her fondly.

"Excuse me," Evangeline requested with a smile, and slid over Bucky's lap to get out of their booth, rather than letting him stand for her to get out.

He grinned at her for that, his grin stupidly happy as he watched her sashay over to the two Canadians and the men they'd decorated the floor with.

"You men will report to Colonel Philips at zero-six-hundred or so help me, I will ask to have you reassigned as guinea-pigs for testing my prosthetic research," Evangeline informed the men on the floor imperiously. "Of course, that means you will each have to lose a limb first, but I'm a doctor. I'm not the least bit squeamish about blood and conducting amputations."

"Yes Ma'am," the conscious few of the beat-up soldiers answered meekly.

Evangeline turned next to the two men in Canadian uniforms, both of whom were appreciating her figure as they held freshly-poured glasses of whiskey. She ignored their appreciative looks and flicked her eyes over their knuckles and their faces. These men had taken a few hits of their own as well, after all. There was a small smattering of blood, but what was on them was all of it. There wasn't more coming from open cuts – there weren't any open cuts, despite the blood that had initially come up from them. There wasn't even any bruising, or split skin on their knuckles.

"As for you two, I want you to report to my medical tent at zero-eight-hundred, after you've had a full breakfast," she instructed them.

"We're fine, Ma'am," denied 'Jimmy'. He had the stripes of a sergeant on his shoulder, and the name 'Howlett' stitched on the tag on the front of his wool jumper. He was also giving her a dashing smile. It was a very nice smile, Evangeline could concede, but she had Bucky.

"Exactly," Evangeline said plainly. "You are both completely fine, and you shouldn't be. I want to run up a physical and get some blood samples."

The two men grimaced. Well, that worked even better than she had thought it would to get them to stop giving her the elevator eyes.

"You've got no authority to be giving orders to us, Frail," 'Vic' pointed out. He too had 'Howlett' on the tag on his chest, but only a corporal's stripes.

They were related, and now that she was looking, she could see that they had the same nose. As that and the colour of their hair seemed to be the only features they had in common, she was going to guess they'd had different mothers.

"Technically, I don't have authority over them either. I'm making a personal request right now, Corporal Howlett," she informed him pertly, not at all appreciative of the moniker the man had given her. "I can easily contact your superior officer and have him order you. I'm going to have to speak to him about getting your medical files either way, and possibly also about the two of you getting into a bar fight."

Sergeant Howlett grimace at the prospect, while his... brother?... scowled and slumped back in his chair.

"We'll be there," the sergeant agreed, though he was clearly less than thrilled with the prospect.

"Good," Evangeline declared with a smile, turned on her toes, and returned to the booth where Bucky, Carter, and Rogers were waiting for her. "Are you going to stand up, or do I get to slide over your lap again?" Evangeline asked, fighting against a mirthful smile as she looked down at Bucky.

"I honestly don't know," Bucky admitted as he grinned back up at her.

Rogers kicked him under the table.

Bucky stood.

"Ruin our fun," Evangeline pouted at Rogers, even as she slid back into her corner of the booth.


	12. Chapter 12

Bucky grinned as he helped Evangeline take blood from the Howlett brothers. The camp medic was busy patching up Hodge and his buddies, and the nearest mash was a two days away by truck, so there weren't any nurses to help his pretty doctor. That was fine though. He'd been on the receiving end of her needles enough times to learn how it went. He'd been able to get over the last lingering trauma from being on Zola's table too, it happened that often.

Of course, she was aware of his trauma, and had been sure to reinforce the experience with _her_ as positive, generally by feeding him her home (tent?) cooking once she'd collected the very small samples she'd needed at the time.

The Canadians would be leaving the area in less than a month. Actually, the Howling Commandos would be going with them when they went. The Commandos would be back two months after. The Canadians would be pressing on. This was essentially Evangeline's only chance to collect blood from these two.

Which meant that she was feeding them beef broth to keep them happy while she set up a drain from each of their arms. She might be collecting excessive to her needs, she might not, but better to have a little more and not need it, than run out and have to track these two down while the war was going on – or after it ended, which would likely be harder.

"Don't know what you're gonna do with it all," Sergeant James 'Jimmy' Logan Howlett complained lightly when, after the general (if thorough) physical, she told them how much she wanted.

"Well, I promise I'm not going to use it to perform any dark rituals to control you," Evangeline said with an amused smile. "Mostly, I'm going to see if it's possible to recreate your ability to heal, and study the extent of it, if I can."

"Mostly?" the sergeant repeated, having caught the word.

"I want to see how your healing reacts to various toxins, drugs, and medicines as well," Evangeline explained lightly. "But I've got to recreate it first, and I don't know if that will be hard or easy to do."

"Right," Corporal Victor Logan Howlett growled.

Evangeline held in a sigh at the recalcitrant attitudes, and started questioning them on their own experiences and observations of their ability to heal and a comprehensive list of injuries suffered to date.

The most interesting was a story of a time that the sergeant had tried to cook, and sliced off the end of one of his fingers. At the joint. It had taken half an hour, and it had been painful, but the tip of his finger had grown back, whole and complete and like nothing had ever happened. There wasn't even a scar left behind.

They weren't prepared to test against loss of whole limbs, which was only sensible really, but there hadn't been anything yet that they hadn't recovered from, one-hundred percent, no medical attention needed beyond a shot of alcohol to distract from the pain. Apparently painkillers didn't work, but their pain-receptors did. Even being shot a dozen times in the chest, mid-charge, wasn't enough to do more than just slow them down a little bit.

"Then again, the new stuff might," the sergeant hummed thoughtfully. "Haven't really bothered with the stuff since, what?"

"Eighteen-twelve I think," the corporal supplied, but he didn't sound sure. "For us, anyway. Think you were carrying some for our squad-mates still when we were in the first World War. Getting your hands on the drugs to carry around just in case got too complicated for us for this war."

The sergeant nodded.

They'd been soldiers for over a century, Evangeline realised, and they were like this without any medical intervention like Erskine's formula. Their healing ability was completely natural.

"Is it just healing?" she asked curiously as she changed out the jars again.

"Nah," the sergeant denied with an easy shake of his head. "Me an' Vic, we generally get put on tracking squads once the initial charge is done. We can literally smell out the enemy, hear 'em coming better than anyone else, and then there's these," he revealed, and closed a hand into a fist. A fist from which three jagged claws, each one as long as his forearm, slid out from between his knuckles. The sergeant retracted them a moment later.

"I can't do that," the corporal admitted freely. "Just make the claws I've already got grow a little," he said, then flexed his fingers and, yes, those nails did grow to look like a respectable, if not exactly clean, set of claws. He also flashed a cocky smirk that showed off a full and proper fang where a regular canine tooth ought to have been.

Evangeline and Bucky both stopped to stare at that.

"Why the hell did we actually tell you that?" the corporal demanded suddenly with an infuriated growl.

"Doctor Potter's just special like that," Bucky intervened easily.

"None of what you have told me will be going into your official medical files," she promised them both earnestly, then checked the levels of the jars they were bleeding into. "Time to switch out the bottles," she said softly to Bucky.

"Pretty sure taking more than a pint a blood is supposed to be unhealthy," the sergeant commented as Bucky passed Evangeline the empty pint jar, which was promptly connected by a hose to the needles that dug into each of their right arms.

"Do you feel dizzy or light headed?" Evangeline asked as she swapped out first one jar, then the other.

"No," the corporal admitted for the both of them. "With as fast as we heal, I don't think we should be, really. On the other hand, could be there might be something off about that, like with why we told you all that other stuff."

"It's only a couple of pints of blood," Evangeline promised. She didn't want to taint any results with blood replenishing potion, but the healing factor might kick in a bit more for that second pint, and she wanted to see as much of that as she could. Chiefly because that strange and miraculous ability to heal was completely unstudied. A matter she intended to rectify. Medical school had really instilled a scientific curiosity in her. Okay, she'd always been naturally inquisitive, but medical school had honed and directed that curiosity, and this sort of curiosity was a lot safer than poking her nose into the mystery of what a giant, three-headed dog was doing on the third floor of her school. Or chasing after voices whispering murder from inside the walls while students were being petrified. Or confronting a crazy man who had very recently escaped a prison and was rumoured to be after he life, and demanding answers of him while unarmed.

Yes, medical curiosity was much, much safer. As she also had a strong moral compass and wouldn't experiment or test on people until it was the absolutely last option, and made sure they were fully briefed and _willing_ , then she was ahead of the curve for a lot of the scientists that seemed to be kicking about at the moment. Certainly miles and leagues better than the people who worked for Hydra.

~oOo~

"Doctor Potter."  
"Colonel Philips."

"You going to pick one of these men to turn into another Super Soldier for me any time soon?" the old soldier demanded shortly. "You've picked one of them, I can tell from the way you're always lookin' back and forth between them and the clipboard you're holdin'."

"Yes," Evangeline agreed, but her mouth twisted as she watched the soldiers who were running drills. "But something else has come up. There's a problem with one of them. I think they'd be just about ideal otherwise."

"I'd guessed from your frownin' there was somethin' wrong. What might that problem be? You've already proven missing limbs is no obstacle, not that any of this batch have that problem, and Rogers is proof that being ninety pounds wet and asthmatic isn't an issue either."

"One of these soldiers lied on their enlistment form," Evangeline illuminated grimly.

"Lied how?" Philips demanded. That was illegal, after all. He didn't all that much care if they'd lied about where they were from, but... rules. "And what difference does it make?"

"Lying in general is classified as 'bad', Colonel. Bad becomes worse," Evangeline reminded the older man with a vaguely amused huff. "That's not the real problem though. If they'd just lied about their age or where they'd come from, I wouldn't be troubled. Rogers lied about where he was from five times, apparently. Very keen to join the army, do his part to serve and protect, to bleed and die and sacrifice himself for the cause. So's this soldier. They're just about ideal. Very self-sacrificing, selfless, they're even smart too. Caring, humble, all the things Erskine looked for."

Colonel Philips chuckled at the reminder of how skinny and useless Rogers had been when Erskine first brought him onto his army base at Lehigh. How he'd personally been convinced as to Rogers' suitability for the project by throwing himself onto a grenade (a dummy one, but one that everybody else had believed was real) that everyone else had thrown themselves away from.

He could look back and laugh now, but that was now.

"Alright," Philips said. "Apart from the lying, what's the problem with him?"

"He's a she," Evangeline answered flatly. "That's the detail that Private Danvers lied about on their enlistment form, though how they got through their physical, I have no idea. Not unless the doctor was bribed, a family friend, or stupidly desperate to meet some sort of quota for recruits they passed, or something."

"Are you telling me that the most promising candidate you have in this little group is actually a woman who somehow sneaked her way into a regular company full of soldiers?" Colonel Philips demanded softly.

"And I have no idea how the serum will react to the biology of a female subject," Evangeline added with a confirming nod. "It's been geared to work for men, not women. I could tweak it to work, but I don't know how long that would take. There are a few fundamental differences in our biology and internal chemical balances to take into account."

"You mean apart from the things that should be damn obvious to anybody lookin' a person up and down," Philips grumbled, and swore under his breath. "You picked someone else?" he asked. "I'm not going to ask you to turn a woman into a Super Soldier. That would look bad for the whole Allied forces for one thing, and if the stuff reacted badly because she's a woman, then that would look even worse."

"Corporal Parker," Evangeline supplied at once. "He volunteered on his birthday, the very day he was old enough for the army to take him."

"A kid?" Colonel Philips repeated, not liking the prospect much more than he'd like the idea of a ninety-pound asthmatic.

"He volunteered for the same reasons that Rogers did," Evangeline said, ignoring the question. It was war. No one lasted a month in the field and stayed a kid. Depending on the day, childhood could be completely ripped away in an hour. Then again, so could a person's very life. "He's been in the war for a couple of years already, but he's still as keen as ever to do his part. He's done all his growing, so there's no concerns there. Corporal Parker is the best option in this group to put through the program."

Colonel Philips nodded in satisfaction.

"Make the offer," he instructed shortly. "He agrees, we'll put him through it. I'll let Stark know to make sure he's got enough generators ready and in working order."

~oOo~

"Nice to see you again, Evangeline," Howard greeted with a smile and a warm handshake. "I'd say it's been too long, but the longer I have between meetings with anyone, the better the prospects are for the war ending, is my understanding."  
"You're a friend, Howard," Evangeline countered. "You shouldn't be a stranger."

"Lonely, are you? I know Barnes is off somewhere with Rogers right now, doing things you can't be told are happening," Howard commented sympathetically.

"I've kept myself busy," Evangeline evaded skilfully. "I've almost got the prosthetic plans completely figured out, but I'm a medical expert, not an engineer."

"You should swing by the hotel where they've put me up," Howard suggested. "When we're done looking over the plans, we could have some fondue."

Evangeline laughed, having been treated to the story of The Fondue Misunderstanding by Agent Carter shortly after Bucky and Rogers had left with the Canadians. No, it was Peggy now. They had finally gotten around to asking the other for first-name terms.

"Or maybe you could try slumming it with the soldiers once in a while, they know how to have a good time too," she countered, feeling better already. She had been feeling a bit (okay, more than a bit) lonely.

Bucky wouldn't be back from his mission for another month, but then... that was only if everything went to plan. Evangeline knew from experience that no plan ever really survives contact with the enemy. She was admittedly a bit more used to covert guerrilla warfare and hit-and-run tactics, but it still held true.

If Bucky and the others came back alive and on time, then that would probably be the best birthday present of her life. She'd kind of forgotten about her birthday the year before. She'd been too busy with everything else, but she wouldn't be this year. This year, when the date rolled around, Evangeline fully expected to be sitting, waiting, and counting the hours until Bucky walked back into camp.

She could actually remember looking up from her work, spotting the calendar, and making an off-hand comment about having forgotten her own birthday the year before. It was probably so clear because Bucky had heard her absent soliloquising and (in a very polite, gentlemanly manner) reprimanded her for not telling him the date before it had passed. Before the week was out, he'd somehow managed to get her a bar of chocolate for a late gift.

"I'll think about it," Howard allowed with a chuckle. "If it will keep you from moping, I even promise to take you out once a week until your man gets back."

"And start the rumour that you've stolen his girl while you're at it?" Evangeline questioned pointedly, one dark eyebrow arched pointedly.

"No, never!" Howard objected, a grin on his face. "But you're not the sort of lady to let yourself mope, if I'm any judge, so you shouldn't hole yourself away like a nun while you wait for him to come back. After all, he's definitely coming back."

Evangeline took a deep, bracing breath, and nodded. Yes, Bucky was definitely coming back. He was a Super Soldier. He wasn't alone. He had the medallion she'd given him that was laced with various protective spells. She'd spelled his regular dog-tags to be a portkey that would bring him to her – not base camp, but actually lock onto her magical signature and land him within a foot of her own person – when he recited his service number.

He would be coming back to her.

"Thanks Howard," Evangeline said softly. "I needed to hear that."

"No problem, Doc," Howard agreed easily. "I'm definitely interested in looking over what you got for the prosthetics though. I was completely serious about that."

"I'll bring them here tomorrow for you to look over. Is everything ready?" Evangeline asked, moving on into a more professional mind-set.

"Just ran a last check over the generators yesterday," Howard answered freely. "Everything is A-okay. Just need the serum and the soldier."

"Well, here's the serum," Evangeline said, and pulled a small case from her pocket that held the all-important half-dozen vials of glowing blue formula. "And this -" she gestured for the young man who had been waiting just inside the door to step forward, "- is the soldier. Howard Stark, meet Corporal Owen Parker."

"How d'you do," Howard greeted the young corporal with a polite, perfunctory nod.

"How d'you do," Parker replied, a little nervously. Just three years in the army, and he had already forgotten how civilians interacted with each other. He was the only soldier in the bunker. Every other person present was a civilian, not that there were a lot of people present.

"Are we prepared with new uniforms?" Evangeline questioned next, all friendliness gone from her tone in exchange for clinical preparedness.

"We've got something that should fit, based on the recorded physical changes of the previous two times we've gone through this," Howard supplied, all joking gone.

"You mean that I'll really -?" Parker asked, and raised a hand above his head to indicate the possibility of his gaining height. He wasn't as short as Rogers had been when he'd gone in, but he wasn't quite six-foot tall either.

"Growth is kind of the point of this procedure," Evangeline said. "You'll need to strip down to just your trousers, and then lie down on the bed of the machine."

"Yes Ma'am," Parker agreed at once, and began by taking off his hat.

A few minutes later, it became clear that seventy percent was where the pain would consistently hit all subjects. Parker screamed at that point just the same as Rogers and Bucky had.

"Can you keep going, Parker?" Evangeline asked. "You're allowed to say no, we can kill the power and get you out right now if you want!"

"No, I... Just get it over with quickly!"

"Can we do that?" Evangeline snapped out in Howard's direction, eyes sharp.

Howard swallowed nervously and turned the dial smoothly up, just a little bit faster than he had before. The generators couldn't take the added strain of reaching one-hundred percent just that bit sooner than the steady pull had prepared them for. They gave up in a shower of sparks a half-second after the dial hit the top number, whereas the reactors had held for a solid ten seconds after hitting the same point previously, when the levels were increased at a steadier, slightly slower climb.

The pod was opened.

"Looks like Rogers did when he popped out," Howard noted softly.

"Glad I missed that then," Evangeline quipped back. "Call me odd or old-fashioned, but I don't think a man's pectorals should be large enough to fill a brassiere."

Howard choked at that, but was quick enough to follow her up to help Parker down that first step, and then to a chair for the medical check-up that the lady doctor insisted on while someone fetched a new uniform for Parker to dress in.

He and the others that had been transferred in for assessment would be shipped out again in two days. Even Private Danvers. She'd be reassigned, but she'd been a good soldier, so the MPs weren't going to make a big deal about her lying about her gender on her enlistment form. There were definitely questions being asked about how she'd got through the physical though.


	13. Chapter 13

"What's eating you, Potter?" Colonel Philips demanded softly. "And don't deny that something is, or you wouldn't be scaring all the troops with the way you're attacking that innocent wooden post with that machete."

"You're not going to ask where I got a machete from?" Potter asked mildly. She made no comment on the fact that the 'innocent wooden post' had been a very tall tree when she started, that it still had roots in the ground, and she'd only attacked it with the machete. No magic at all.

"I saw you make a chair appear out of thin air," he reminded her. "As uncomfortable as that thought makes me sometimes, I figure I'm better off not asking where you get things unless I happen to have need of 'em too."

Potter nodded her understanding of the Colonel's perspective, and didn't say a word about where she had gotten the blade from. Because it wasn't conjured.

"Now answer my question," the colonel ordered.

"I don't think Parker is stable," Potter admitted.

"... And what the hell does that mean?" Philips asked lowly.

"In the pod, when he was being saturated with the vita-rays, he couldn't take it. I mean, he did, but Bucky and Rogers toughed it out. Parker begged it over-with faster, and he wasn't subjected to one-hundred percent saturation for as long as the other two," Potter explained.

"It worked though, didn't it?" Philips questioned. "Kid turned into a Super Soldier, same as Rogers and Barnes."

"Yes," Potter agreed darkly. "And right now, he's fine. I don't know that he still will be in five year's time. In fact, I'm fairly sure he's going to start regressing back to his pre-serum state, slowly and painfully, around that time. I've told him that, by the way."

Not that it would matter quite so much to the army by then, as the war should be over by the end of next year if general history moved to the same time-scale as it had in her dimension of origin. This was mostly professional concern on her part.

"And maybe he'll make the mistake of stepping on a landmine next week and the whole expensive process he got put through will have been wasted," Colonel Philips countered as reasonably as he could, though frustration shone through. "Don't you have something else to do besides wave a damn machete around and making my men nervous? What about that project for the fancy new limbs for our amputees?"

"Howard had a look over the plans last week," Potter said as she shook her head. "Double-checked my calculations. He's sourcing materials right now so that he can start building the prototype."

"You don't need to have an amputee to build it for, specifically?" Philips asked.

"Once a prosthetic is built, it needs to be fitted and calibrated, and ideally it would be made to the measurements of the person who is going to wear it," Potter supplied. "But Howard can build one without needing an amputee to fit it to immediately, and it's just the prototype stage. The maths is good, but what's theoretically possible and what's actually possible don't always match up."

Philips wasn't quite sure what to say to that. On one hand, he was glad that progress was being made with the prosthetics, because there were a lot of people being left a limb short from this war that didn't deserve it. On the other, because the project was at the point where Doctor Potter had handed it over the the engineers, she didn't have it to keep her busy – and it turned out that a distracted-and-aimless Doctor Potter was very good at frightening the men.

"Some other project then," Philips tried. "Because frankly it isn't good for morale to have the little lady doctor swingin' a machete around like she knows how to eviscerate someone with it."

"I do know how to eviscerate someone with it," Potter pointed out calmly. "I can also perform crude amputations and effective executions, as well as cleave skulls in half."

"I thought doctors of medicine took oaths against causing harm that wasn't medically required," Philips quipped.

"Most do. I didn't," Potter stated flatly, then sighed. "I'm sorry, Colonel. You don't deserve the attitude from me. I guess even eight years of medical school isn't enough for me to get used to being a non-combatant, especially in a war-zone."

"If you want me to send you out on a mission, you're crazy," Colonel Philips informed her plainly and unsympathetically. "You're too important to risk. Hell, I've half a mind to send you State-side just to make sure you stay properly safe. You could probably find men to put through the Super Soldier process a lot easier over there too."

Potter shook her head.

"I don't want to go on a mission," she denied. "I got into medicine because I was sick of fighting and risking my life. I'm just paranoid and worried. And itching," she admitted. "Like I said, I'm not used to not fighting. Even if fighting isn't something that I want to do, it's still something I'm used to doing, particularly in settings like this."

"That, I can understand," the Colonel allowed with a nod. "But you can't go on scaring the men like this."

"It's not like I'm blowing up the camp," Potter muttered. "I think I'm being very contained, really."

"That's as may be, but watching a delicate-looking thing like you swinging around a pig-sticker like that shatters a lot of illusions and makes all the men you've threatened bodily harm to – and apart from myself, there isn't one currently in this camp that you haven't – very twitchy. Twitchy is a bad thing to have in men who are handling munitions."

"Sorry, Colonel," Potter apologised, and slipped the large blade through a modified gun-holster that hung by her left thigh. "I guess I'm just worried about..."

"Lieutenant Barnes survived five months as a regular soldier, another month under Zola, and eight months with the Howling Commandos before sheer bad luck sent him over the side of a cliff and you met him," Colonel Philips rattled off, well aware of just what exactly was distracting the lady doctor. He wasn't sympathetic, but he was aware. "He'd been keeping up with Rogers for eight months, every trick, every mission, shoulder to shoulder with a Super Soldier through nothing more than sheer grit, skill and determination. Then he lost his arm, met you, and luckily didn't die. Now he's a Super Soldier, has been for the better part of six months. Doctor Potter, you don't have a damn thing to worry about when it comes to Barnes."

"Yes Sir," she said softly.

"Find something to play with that the men will find less disturbing," Colonel Philips ordered.

"I suppose I do have a couple of pints of blood I could be running tests on," Doctor Potter agreed.

~oOo~

Evangeline had only very, very recently graduated from medical school when the accident that brought her into an alternate version of World War Two happened. She had been planning to open her own private practice – one open to both the magical and non-magical populations – since the day after her first practical class in a hospital.

That meant making a few purchases. Most of which, honestly, she hadn't got to. She'd made a list, things to buy, but apart from a couple of things that she could start using while still studying, she'd deliberately put off buying equipment until after her graduation. After all, technology was starting to really advance quite quickly in the new millennium, a new amazing advance coming out every other year. Evangeline had decided that she'd get on to buying the building she'd set up her practice in before she started buying things to fill it.

Which meant that she was completely without all of the very clever machines that she could have just dropped a sample of blood into and gotten a read-out from. Machines which, admittedly, would have had to have been kept in a room separate from any magic, because as with a CD player, magic would have really messed them up – and these machines were a bit too expensive to be replacing every week because of magical interference.

So she had a pile of scalpels and clamps, a selection of syringes, and a truly massive collection of beakers, vials and sample cups. She had a handful of pipettes, a nifty little box for sterilising things, and the most powerful microscope she could find that was completely analogue. She had her stethoscope, the little reflex hammer, a pen-light, and the instrument that was used for checking ears. That's not including the cupboard that was bigger on the inside and stocked completely full of a thousand bottles of hundreds of different potions.

This was the equipment she'd had to work with when she was putting Doctor Erskine's formula together – which was, admittedly, part of the reason it had taken so long, even with comprehensive notes from the man's ghost to work from.

An attempt to isolate specific features in a genetic chain in blood samples, well... no one with any sense would call that easy. Not even when Evangeline could use the engorgement charm on the individual cells under the microscope so that she was not totally inhibited by the limits of the apparatus she had access to.

Genetics hadn't really been her main area of study anyway. Sure, there had been mandatory classes, but Evangeline had specialised in Trauma and General Practice. Provided the heart was still beating, the brain was still working, the patient had a will to live, she could put a person back together like a jigsaw. Of course, much like a jigsaw, she couldn't do anything about where there were pieces missing. The chief reason she'd bought the microscope at all (when she could have just used a school one and then, when she had her practice, shipped samples off to one of the many hospitals that would run such samples and mail back results), was because it was quicker and easier if she could take a sample from a wound, stick it under glass, and check to make sure there wasn't any infection _herself_.

In short, analysing the blood she'd collected from the Howlett brothers and put under stasis charms was neither something she was equipped or really trained for. She was the best doctor of this era, but she hadn't been top of her class when she'd graduated. She'd only got an average of eighty-four percent on the classes that involved cellular analysis. She'd done so well because she was extremely observant (how else could she spot a snitch from the far end of a quidditch pitch with bludgers flying at her?) and had learned from Hermione about researching, comparing, and referencing external sources of information.

She had no idea how anybody had ever grown a human ear on the back of a bald mouse. Not her area. War had taught her how to destroy, her focus in medical school had been to heal in reaction to destruction, and also to move towards having a normal life. Being a GP was just about as normal as a person of her wealth and station could get.

For all the frustration she was feeling at the moment – impotence, helplessness, uselessness – Evangeline knew she wouldn't trade her current situation for her old life and the plans she had initially made for it. So what if she was forcing herself to learn more about a medical field she didn't even have all the books on, out in the middle of Europe during the War? It was better than having to listen to Kingsley's constant begging to join the Auror force.

(She could still remember the last time. He'd shown up in person rather than sending an owl. "You're the best there is at taking down Dark Wizards, and you're going to throw it all away? Please, Potter, please reconsider!" She'd kicked him out of her house, slammed the door behind him, and posted a letter of complaint against him to the _Daily Prophet_. She didn't know if he would have finally stopped after that, because she'd wound up here two days after.)

All of that did not, however, mean that she wasn't getting bloody-minded over the matter of how to figure out the mystery of the Howlett's healing factor. Especially since there wasn't exactly a plethora of white mice available to experimenting with (and no, conjured mice wouldn't work). She also wasn't going to use the men for her experiments, whatever her threats to the contrary.

There was also the fact that the Howling Commandos were roughly four months late returning from the mission they were on, and still hadn't come back. Colonel Philips knew where they were, knew what they were doing. He was getting reports in every two weeks.

That didn't keep Evangeline from wanting to pull her hair out. Or alternately, her wand. She could very easily charge herself off into the wilds and send tripping jinxes at whoever tried to stop her, blasting hexes at the enemy, and just plain keep on going until she felt better about herself. Damn, but she thought she'd left that part of herself behind. No, she definitely had. The problem was, she'd left it with the war, and here she was, in another one.

At least Colonel Philips had been sensible enough to not demand any more Super Soldiers from her after the last one. Then again, that might have had something to do with not being able to get any more generators from allies or the enemy, and the ones they'd used to put Parker through had burnt out completely. They'd been able to fix them once, after Bucky went through, but now? The things were unrecoverable, having melted themselves down into so much slag. Howard had turned them over to the factories to turn into bullets.

Evangeline pushed her work away from herself, got up from her desk, and left her library behind completely, and headed for the kitchen. She might have been forced to cook for the Dursleys when she was a child, might have been starved by them while she did it, but since she'd left them behind when she was sixteen, since she'd started cooking for herself, she'd found it a good deal more enjoyable.

Baking, in particular, was good for de-stressing.

Evangeline paused when she set the bag of flour on the kitchen bench.

Baking was even more relaxing when done to music.

She fetched her record-player and a selection of records, set them on the breakfast table, and set the first record she picked up to playing. While the record that had Lena Horne cooing out _Stormy Weather_ (possibly not the best choice, all things considered) started playing, Evangeline returned to the pantry for more necessary ingredients.


	14. Chapter 14

She was in her tent, alone, and it was Christmas Day. Bucky still wasn't back from the front. None of the Howling Commandos were. There had been a couple of personal letters, written while in trucks as they kept going from one trouble-spot to the next, and a lot of much more professional, official reports got sent back. The former all had little bits of them blacked out by the post-masters, and the latter were all written in code and not available for her reading anyway.

Even if the shooting had stopped for the day, the war machine still churned though. Nothing like a ceasefire to allow for troops a bit more freedom of movement.

Injured could finally be safely shipped out. Fresh troops could be safely moved up. Munitions could be taken down and given necessary maintenance without fear.

Evangeline had set up a small (fake) Christmas tree in the corner of the living-space of her tent. It was thick with plastic pine-needles that it shed almost as thickly as if it were a real one, and she'd decorated it with fake birds of all sorts. The single partridge was attached to a ceramic pear, and the turtle doves were a pair, heads bent together. She'd skipped the french hens though, and gone straight onto the 'calling' birds, of which there were a good deal more than four. More than just four different types of songbird too. Anything that she liked the chirp of was sitting in that tree, and yes, the birds all did their part to add music to the tent.

It had been a tricky thing to figure out. Not just because of the charms work involved, but also the matter of composition, harmonisation, timing. Which bird sang what note when. It was worth it though. It had distracted her from the absences, kept her busy and challenged – and not thinking about the trial-and-error testing phase she'd reached with testing the Howlett blood.

Dispersed among the approximate-dozen birds that were 'nesting' in her tree (including a miniaturised swan, just the one though, because pretty as the birds were, they couldn't sing worth a damn; also, like the french hens, the geese had been left out entirely) were two-dozen tea-lights. It would have been a fire-hazard on any other tree, but Evangeline was really just using the tiny candles to secure little bluebell flames, which gave light, but no heat, and couldn't actually burn anything.

The choir of robin-sized birds (which meant that the robin that was on the tree was one of the few that was actual-size) finished _Silent Night_ , and moved on to the next song that Evangeline had charmed them to be able to sing. Professor Flitwick would have been very proud of her, she was sure, but... that didn't matter right now.

"Have yourself a merry little Christmas, let your heart be light. Next year all our troubles will be out of sight..." Evangeline sang softly along to the accompaniment provided by the charmed birds. The film that made this particular song famous had been released that year. Sheet music wasn't too hard to come by, even out here. The men needed something to be cheerful about, after all, and music cheered like nothing else.

"... Have yourself a merry little Christmas, make the Yule-tide gay. Next year all our troubles will be miles away..."

Well, there were exceptions. Sad songs, of course, and the Hogwarts School Song was pretty horrible, forever being mangled by four-hundred voices singing it to four-hundred different tunes, and only about four percent of those voice singing their choice of song on-key. That was pretty horrific.

"... Once again as in olden days, happy golden days of yore, faithful friends who were dear to us, will be near to us once more..."

When Bucky and Rogers got back, Evangeline decided that she was going to invite the other couple (Peggy and Rogers) to Christmas Dinner in her tent. She didn't care how late they were for it. She had three brightly-wrapped presents under her little tree for them, and there they would stay until all three of them could congregate together again.

"... Some day soon, we all will be together, if the Fates allow..."

God, she felt like crying.

"... Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow..."

She was crying. Hot, fat tears rolled down her face, and she could feel her sinuses beginning to block up.

"So have yourself a... Merry... little... Christmas... now!"

In the privacy of her empty tent, with only the singing of charmed birds for company, Evangeline broke down and cried. Maybe it was the song. It was actually a very sad song. It was forward-looking, but in such a way that subtly admitted to the present not being very joyful. The happy days of times gone were just that: gone. The future might be shining and hopeful, but there was no knowing just yet how far away that bright future was.

And that's not taking into account the emotionally charged little scene it was part of in _Meet Me In St Louis_ that it had starred in, full of quietly breaking hearts and the earnest, sobbing tears of a little girl who didn't want to move away from the only home she'd ever known. Not even to New York, which so many people dreamed of seeing, because there really was no place like home.

Evangeline swiped at her tears as she chuckled wetly at the thought that _there's no place like home_ might possibly be a bit of a theme with Judy Garland, since it slipped into so many of her movies somewhere, sometimes a single song, sometimes the moral of the story... Or maybe it was just a product of the times, with so many people safe in their houses eager to go off and do their parts in the war, and so many men in the trenches desperately wishing they were back home.

A flick of her wand, and Evangeline had a soft linen handkerchief to blow her nose on. She closed her eyes and let her head rest on the back of her couch once she'd vanished the square (and the mess she'd made on it). When had she become so... pathetic? Or was this normal? She wasn't sure that she knew anything at all in that moment.

~oOo~

The tree was still up in her tent, but that was to be expected, really. Evangeline knew that some people had a tradition of keeping their trees until all the needles had fallen off. For those with fake trees, something else had to mark the day it got packed away. Hermione had once said that her parents had used to pack up the tree while the New Years countdown played on their television set, and it was a fun race to get all the decorations from all over the house packed up between dinner and the fireworks.

Evangeline had adopted something like that tradition for herself after the war, but this year... She wasn't taking that tree down until the presents were gone from underneath it.

She just changed the songs that the birds sang for her.

Right now though, Evangeline was sitting in the pub with Peggy, and they each had a small snifter of whiskey in front of them.

"Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?" sang the many soldiers who had leave enough to gather in the pub to celebrate. Perhaps not to celebrate another year at war, but rather, to celebrate having lived through it. To remember those who hadn't.

"Never have I ever," Evangeline said softly as she swirled the amber liquid in her glass. "Kissed a person."

"Really?" Peggy asked, surprised.

Evangeline shook her head, and raised an eyebrow at her friend. Her green gaze flicked pointedly from Peggy's face to her drink.

Peggy huffed, but took a tiny sip. Her having kissed Rogers right before he jumped onto Schmitt's taxiing plane from a moving car was just slightly famous, and they had kissed each other on their dates since. As such, it was a pointless call on Evangeline's part, except that it got the admission out there, and a turn where she didn't have to take a drink.

They weren't aiming to get drunk, that would be completely irresponsible of them, but a silly game and just enough alcohol to chase off the chill made them feel a little better about, well, not quite everything. It helped though.

"Forgive me, but I find it hard to believe," Peggy admitted as she set her glass back on the table.

Evangeline shrugged.

"Believe it or not, it's still true," she stated plainly. "No family I ever kissed on the cheek, no boyfriends while I was at school, none of it."

"What about Lieutenant Barnes?" Peggy pressed curiously.

Evangeline shook her head.

"I've seen him in nothing but his shorts, but that was for medical reasons," she said. "No kisses though. Bucky is being very sweet and gentlemanly and slow, even with the war burning all around us."

"I'm surprised," Peggy admitted, a touch apologetic. "So many people are forgoing proper courtships because of the war, the looming possibility of death... I suppose I didn't expect Barnes to be one of the few who wouldn't..."

"He's a good man," Evangeline stated plainly. "He wants to do right by me," she added, a small, warm smile on her face. "Your turn, Peggy."

"Hmm," Peggy mused thoughtfully. "Never have I ever..." she giggled. "Written lines for punishment at school."

Evangeline winced, but despite the unpleasant memories of that experience, she smoothly lifted the glass to her lips and took her sip.

"I thought as much," Peggy teased. "What was it for?"

"The professor in question had a political agenda that included my annihilation," Evangeline answered in an angry mutter. "I told the truth, which she neither believed or liked, therefore I was punished, and writing lines sounds like an innocuous punishment. Except that I was made to write lines using my own blood."

Peggy blinked at that, shocked.

Evangeline had managed to get the words _I Must Not Tell Lies_ removed from the back of her hand, but it had been a painful process. Two parts magic (the letters were cursed, the curse had to be removed) and one part skin-graft at a non-magical hospital to finish off the healing.

"Happier topics," Evangeline begged. "Never have I ever... had fondue."

Peggy huffed.

"Despite Howard's invitations and suggestions, neither have I," Peggy countered with a wry smile.

Evangeline laughed.

The raucous countdown to New Year began. Another chorus of _Auld Lang Sine_ started up as the clock ticked over. Evangeline and Peggy joined in.


	15. Chapter 15

"You want to maybe tell me why I had to knock on your tent-flap like it was a door?" Colonel Philips demanded by way of greeting.

"Perhaps it's because I'm a paranoid little bird living among a whole lot of alley cats that are at war with each other?" Evangeline suggested. "This isn't my first war, Colonel. I covered my tent in so many protective spells – yes, Colonel, I'm giving you a word for what I do. It's magic. I'm a witch. I am also from an alternate dimension and year. It's not something I advertise, and I'd appreciate you keeping it under your hat. As I was saying, I've layered my tent in so many protective spells, it will stand undisturbed against bombs that haven't even been invented yet."

At least, she didn't think they'd been invented yet. When was the Atomic Bomb invented? When had nuclear warheads become a thing?

"But those protections do me no good if people can just walk in," she pointed out. At the moment, the wards were keyed to herself and Bucky. And Hermione, but Hermione's ability to appear in Evangeline's tent was frankly moot when there were roughly seventy years and a different dimension separating them.

Colonel Philips gave her a long, measuring look. Then he shifted his gaze to her tent.

"No, I can't make every tent in camp bomb-proof," Evangeline denied before he even opened his mouth to make the request. "Those kind of spells need a specially made magical anchor, which are very, very difficult to make. I have exactly one, and it's holding the spells for my tent. I cannot add more spells for other tents to it."

"Damn," the colonel muttered.

"I assume you had a reason for knocking on my tent?" Evangeline prompted.

"We're bugging out," Colonel Philips informed her plainly. "We leave in two hours. Be ready."

"No problem," she agreed easily. Two hours was plenty of time. She'd had to bug out in five minutes in the past. Hell, there had been times where she'd had to bug out in five seconds and proceed to run for her life. Two hours at least meant that she could pack properly, rather than just sending everything flying into her trunk and leaving there in a jumble until she unpacked again – and okay, yes, her trunk had a sorting charm on it, but with the amounts of stuff she owned, it took time for it to sort itself out if she just tossed everything in at random.

Evangeline stared at her tent's living room for a while after Philips gave the order though. So much for not packing up the tree until Bucky got back and they'd had Christmas. It was a week passed Easter now though, so perhaps it was time, even if she had been perfectly willing to have Christmas in July, just so long as she could have it with him.

Fleur would likely approve the sentiment, the French witch was very much a romantic. She was as practical as she was passionate though, and would understand the necessity of wishes going unfulfilled now and then. Evangeline hadn't thought of Fleur for a while, and suddenly couldn't help but wonder how she was doing.

She'd married Bill Weasley, right smack in the middle of the war. They'd had a daughter when Evangeline had left (better to think of it that way than 'the accident', really), and another child due to join the family any day. The eldest was probably at Hogwarts by now, or would be soon, and the one Evangeline had never met should be toddling about and getting into mischief.

At the time, a part of Evangeline had thought Bill and Fleur were crazy for wanting to get married while the war was going on. She'd recognised the desperation to get as much of their lives in as they could. To live each second, each minute, each hour to the fullest, when there was a chance the next day wouldn't come at all.

She saw that same quiet desperation all around her. During that war, and this one. The chief difference seemed to be that, in this war, people were skipping over marriage in favour of a single night of comfort. It didn't always work out so well for the young women who were left behind, but the shame of having a child out of wedlock (which had still existed in the new millennium, whatever people might say otherwise) had to be compared to the fear of becoming a widow who barely got a wedding night.

Especially when there were no guarantees one way or the other about the possibility of children being brought into the world right now. Evangeline never expected to suddenly question when the modern condom had been invented and using them had become accepted practice.

She shook the thoughts out of her head. She had things that needed to be done. Evangeline got changed first. She couldn't very well ride a big black motorcycle in a knee-length grey skirt, after all. Once she was suitably dressed for bugging out and moving on, Evangeline drew her wand and set to packing everything into her trunk. When the tent was empty, she recalled the wards, pulled her trunk out through the tent flap, and collapsed the canvas construct with another flick of her wand. Poles were tied, the tent folded, and the lot was packed away. The large red trunk became a little red trinket once more, and was reattached to charm bracelet.

"That's quite a trick," Peggy declared softly, eyes wide and staring at the empty space where a tent had been moments before.

"Are you finished packing?" Evangeline asked.

"Just have to get the tent down," Peggy confirmed, still staring at where Evangeline's tent no longer was.

Evangeline flicked her wand at her friend's tent, just as she'd done for her own. Five seconds later, it was a neat little bundle, with the tent-poles jammed through the middle and the ropes wrapped around the outside holding it all secure.

"Have you been told where we're going?" Evangeline asked hopefully.

Her words jarred Peggy out of her slightly stunned stupor. She wasn't nearly used to Evangeline waving a stick and the impossible happening. Apart from the day that Evangeline had first showed up with Bucky, when they'd gone after Schmitt and Evangeline had done the impossible several dozen times over (and exhausted herself doing it), Evangeline had actually been very private or very subtle about her use of magic.

The Statute of Secrecy wasn't going to be an issue for her here, but there was exactly no reason at all to go around advertising all of her capabilities to all and sundry.

"We're going to join up with the Howling Commandos," Peggy answered, a warm, content smile on her face. It might have been a prospect of moving closer to the front lines, but that was where Rogers was, so Peggy was glad to be going to him.

Evangeline would be a liar if she were to say she didn't feel the same way, but because Bucky, rather than because Rogers.

"Do they know we're coming?" she tremulously enquired.

"Not exactly," Peggy denied with a shake of her head. "They know the designated rendezvous point and time, that they'll be meeting with 'a company' there, and whichever of us gets there first is to secure a perimeter."

"What time and where, exactly?" Evangeline near-demanded as she pulled Sirius' bike off her charm bracelet and re-sized it so that it was fit to ride.

"Roughly eight hours," Peggy supplied as she eyed the motorcycle – which had very little in common with the motorcycles being used by either side of the war effort at the moment, though it was clearly recognisable as a motorcycle. "... Please tell me you're not thinking of heading to the site alone."

"Can't do that," Evangeline stated plainly. "I don't mind withholding information, letting people assume things, but I never outright lie if I can help it. That would be a lie."

"I refuse to help you get yourself killed," Peggy denied. "Barnes would never forgive me, and Steve..."

"I'll go dig it out of Colonel Philips' head then," Evangeline declared with an easy shrug.

Peggy's jaw worked helplessly as she watched her friend go.

Evangeline was gone by the time Peggy had managed to kick her brain into gear enough to come up with a potentially convincing protestation. Colonel Philips was left swearing in her wake.

~oOo~

Building a house wasn't the simplest of things, of course, that depended on how complicated a house a person was building, and what materials were being used. In Evangeline's case, she was building a very, very basic shelter (really more like a picnic gazebo than a house) that would seat seven men in the middle of a war, and she was building it out of trees.

Trees that she cut down with magic, cut to the right length with magic, and set into place in a nice big square with, you guessed it, magic. It wasn't anything fancy, not really. These men had been eating field rations out of tins while they sat on the ground. Maybe a rock or a fallen log to serve as a chair if they were lucky.

While the gazebo would be rustic and basic (a floor, which was the real luxury for this structure, a few posts around the outside, and a roof), the chairs and table would be proper chairs and a proper table. Transfiguration had been her father's speciality, but Evangeline was no slouch at it either. It was particularly easy when she was keeping things simple. A proper table and set of chairs to seat ten (seven Howling Commandos, herself, Peggy, and Colonel Philips, it would be eleven but Howard wasn't coming with for this leg of the war) didn't have to be fabulously fancy to be luxurious in this setting. The chairs were sturdy, comfortable, and polished smooth. The table-top shone almost mirror-bright.

And she may have conjured up a few quick cushions for the chairs as well.

Probably the best part of the gazebo was the runes she'd burned into each post. Runes that made the air within the gazebo a toasty, cosy, constant warm, and that kept out things like wind, rain, and bugs.

Satisfied with the first structure she'd raised at the rendezvous point, Evangeline set her trunk down, spelled her tent up, set her wards around it, and got cooking. After all, Bucky and the lads would be hungry when they arrived in six hours' time.

Probably thirsty as well.

Evangeline wondered if it would be reasonable to build a still and get it running in time for their arrival. Did she even have the things needed for one? For that matter, did she have the ingredients to make beer? What was she thinking?! She had a massive cellar's worth of all sorts of alcohol in her trunk! A few she'd even bought herself because she'd liked the taste when she went out to dinner with her fellow med students. An approximate third had been inherited.

Sirius might have looked like a man in deep need of a bottle, but he hadn't once touched the stuff once he'd escaped from Azkaban. He'd been very fond of drinking (though not to excess or alcoholism) before, so that was one regular cellar's worth she'd inherited. Remus had admitted to hitting the bottle when he'd thought two of his best friends were dead at the (metaphorical) hands of the third. He'd buy in bulk, drink himself insensible, and then go sober and work until he could afford another case. The year he'd taught at Hogwarts, he'd gone straight, but he'd been buying a bottle of Odgen's Finest every other week, stocking up in preparation for the day he would be forced out. Because Remus was never an optimist, and had been sure he'd be sacked on any given day.

There had also been the large, old collection of bottles that had been in the Potter Cellar. Most of the bottles had been gifts though. Odgen's had gifted her shares in their company, which meant a new bottle every week. Evangeline wasn't a big drinker, not really, but she was a believer in Murphy's Law, and when (not if, she'd firmly believed in when) she somehow ended up stranded on a deserted island, millions of miles from anywhere and with anti-portkey and anti-apparition wards all around her, she knew she'd want the option of _all the alcohol_ then.

It was for the exact same reason that she also had three bottomless boxes, all covered in stasis spells, as well as a regular (magical, slightly-bigger-on-the-inside) refrigerator. All of them very, very well stocked. She had anticipated possibly ending up on that deserted island with the entire Weasley clan, and that was a lot of people to feed.

Especially with the way Ron could stuff his face. He wasn't a 'growing boy' any more, but his appetite hadn't slowed down at all. Then there were the kids to consider, because they _were_ still growing, and growing in number last she'd known.

Evangeline surveyed her kitchen, reviewed the menu she had mentally started planning as she flew over the battle lines on her motorcycle, rolled up her sleeves, and pulled on an apron. She had cooking to be doing.

She'd have to make something for the soldiers as well. It would be cruel and unusual to make a gorgeous dinner for the Howling Commandos, serving it to them in full view of the men, and the men not be allowed to have any. It wouldn't be good for morale either.

Evangeline added a quadruple-batch of chocolate chip biscuits to the things she had to cook in the space of six hours, and turned to eye her oven. Would it be big enough for everything, or should she dig a fire-pit? She could spit-roast the larger meat outside, that would free up some oven space, and eight men (two of them Super Soldiers) would certainly be able to demolish a whole two-year-old bovine between them. Even with soup before-hand, roast vegetables with, and five different dessert options (chocolate cake, treacle tart, apple crumble, blueberry pie, and vanilla ice cream, which could be served alongside any of the previous four options).


	16. Chapter 16

Bucky was the only one to recognise the moment it happened. He was the only one who had felt that particular feeling before. It had been such a long time since he felt it, he was half-surprised he was able to remember it, could still feel it at all. None of the others so much as blinked when they crossed that invisible line.

And there was one. He knew there was one, because he – and he alone – felt when they had crossed it. It's a bit odd, to be the only one to feel that moment when something is suddenly different in the air around them. The Howling Commandos had been through so many scrapes, seen so much of the war, that their instincts were all well-honed and razor sharp. There wasn't a single one of them that hadn't _felt_ a moment of being watched, a moment when they crossed an unmarked line from relative-safety into definite-danger, or the other way around.

Sure, it was usually him or Steve that pinpointed the watcher first (Super Soldiers and all), but not always. The reaction was pretty much always terminal to the one doing the watching though, unless it was a friendly.

Sometimes Dum Dum fired his rifle into the face of someone who'd hidden in a well-disguised fox-hole. Sometimes Monty (and wow, but there were three of them who had been called James by their parents, thankfully all of three of them had a preferred nickname, so there wasn't every any confusion) quietly cocked the hammer back on his revolver, which he'd fixed a silencer to, and proceeded to shoot a guy through the eye at a distance of fifty feet. Sometimes Jaques dropped a bomb on the guy with a satisfied little smile, proud of his work with explosives. Sometimes Jim, who had yet to kill a man in exactly the same way twice. Even Gabe, who was all over the languages bit, knew how to really use the standard ordinance he'd gotten into the habit of picking up from every corpse (enemy and ally alike) along the way.

A lot of times it was Steve, who threw his shield at a guy who was hidden (almost) beyond seeing, and the guy's skull or ribcage was caved in in with the edge before it bounced back to him... and Bucky finished the guy off, because the shield didn't actually kill so much as severely incapacitate people. Sometimes the injuries it caused would eventually be fatal, but it would be a slow, painful death.

Bucky protected Steve from knowing that.

There were also times when it's been Bucky, knife in his hand as he slit a throat, or a neck broken with a strong twist of his bare hands, or a neat little hole sniped in the middle of a forehead, or neck, or chest, from eight-hundred yards while the others were combing an area and hadn't _yet_ spotted the enemy soldier that was creeping up on them with a gun.

None of that was going to happen right now though. Bucky knew it like he knew Steve's name, and he relaxed where he stood – because he knew this feeling, even if it's been almost a year since he'd felt it.

"Buck?" Steve called softly, concerned. If any of them stopped moving, then it had proved to be because they'd noticed something. Something that the others hadn't yet, as was the case here.

Bucky blinked, and realised that he'd stopped moving as he just basked in the feeling and everything that it meant to him. Everything that it meant... A grin bloomed on his face and he gave a loud, joyful _whoop_ as he charged onwards.

"Bucky?!" Steve near-yelled. Not quite, because as far as he knew, there was still the risk of the enemy finding their position and attacking.

Bucky knew for a fact that there was no risk at all, and his blue eyes practically glowed in his face as he raced onward.

The Howling Commandos had little choice but to chase after him.

Soon, they all ground to a shocked stop, as they finally found out what Bucky had known from the moment he crossed that invisible line only he'd noticed: Evangeline was waiting for them. Granted, he hadn't quite expected the set-up waiting with her, but Bucky hardly had eyes for that. His girl was there, and she was racing towards him with her arms spread wide.

He swept her up in his own embrace eagerly. His arms slid into their right place around her waist, and he easily hauled his girl up against his chest. It felt so, so good to hold her again.

"Hey Doll," he greeted happily, a boyish smile stretching his lips and bringing a light to his eyes that had been absent from them from so many months marching at war.

"Hello, my doll-faced bloke," Evangeline replied, a giddy grin on her face as she gladly wrapped her arms around and over his shoulders.

Bucky laughed at that, and revelled in the sound of her answering giggle. He gloried in her weight in his arms and against his chest – he was holding her off the ground, after all – and he wasn't at all sure he was ever going to be ready to let go. To that end...

"Do I have to put you down any time soon?" he asked softly into her ear.

"I suppose I can finish all the cooking with magic," Evangeline answered, laughter burbling through her equally softly-spoken words. "It's mostly getting things out to the table at this point, really, and levitation charms are great for that. Watching platters floating through the air might be a little bit disturbing for your squad-mates though."

Bucky sighed, and loosed his arms enough around Evangeline's waist so that she slid (slowly, since she was still holding onto him as well) down his body until her feet touched the ground again.

"What are you doing here, Doll?" Bucky asked, more audibly. "We were told we would be meeting a company here."

"And you will be," Evangeline agreed easily. "I just move a bit faster than Colonel Philips and his men."

"We're back with the SSR?" Steve asked, eager for confirmation that he'd see his own dame again soon.

"Mhm," Evangeline hummed. "That's right."

"With all respect, Doctor Potter, but... why are you here on your own?" Monty asked, and it was genuine curiosity with only a hint of concern at the edge of his tone. The Brit was nothing if not completely respectful to Evangeline.

"Because I move faster on my own," Evangeline explained with an easy shrug, not the least bit interested in removing herself from Bucky's arms, though she did twist around to face the guys, so she was leaning her back against Bucky's chest.

"Is that really safe, Ma'am?" Jim queried. Even the coarse man from Fresno found a few of his manners for the lady doctor.

"I'm not the least bit worried about my safety," Evangeline waved off with an easy smile. "I do have defences in place, and I knew the instant each one of you stepped across my perimeter."

"So the area's secure?" Dum Dum checked. His hands were still in their places on his rifle.

"Perfectly. Not even shrapnel could get within twenty metres of us right now," Evangeline confirmed brightly.

She only had the one special anchor for the wards of her tent, but for _temporary_ wards, the handily convenient chunk of onyx she'd found poking out of the earth – unrefined though it was – had been just fine. Or would be, for about a week.

Dum Dum grinned, which made his big, bushy moustache stretch and twitch.

"So... are we eating, then?" he suggested hopefully, his eyes on something just passed the reunited couple.

Bucky turned to see what the man was grinning at, and blinked.

"Doll, that's a whole cow you've got on rotisserie," he informed the woman in his arms.

"Yes it is," Evangeline agreed, "and no, I'm not telling where it came from, but there's also soup before we get to the beef, which will have roast vegetables to join, and there's even dessert to look forward to after."

"Soup?" Jaques repeated. Of all the things for a guy to focus on, but that was Jaques.

"Bouillabaisse and ratatouille," Evangeline supplied, and her French accent on the names of the dishes was perfect.

"Mademoiselle Docteur, vous êtes une déesse," the French man declared passionately in his native tongue.

"She is that, but she's _my_ goddess, Jaques," Bucky claimed firmly, and tugged a laughing Evangeline firmly back into his chest again.

Gabe had been teaching Jaques how to speak English, so he could more easily keep up with (and participate in) all conversations. The lessons had caused most of the team to, by proxy, pick up a fair bit of French. Of course, given the circumstances (that is to say: war with Nazi Germany and the Axis powers), Gabe had also been teaching the whole team German. It was unsurprisingly useful sometimes.

"Oui, mon ami, she is your goddess," Jaques laughed, hands up and palm outward facing, a clear show he didn't intend to fight on that score. "But you can share with us the... les résultats de efforts qu'elle a déployés?"

"I dunno," Bucky mused, a smirk on his face. "I think I could eat most of that cow myself."

"I cooked for all of the Howling Commandos," Evangeline said firmly, and rolled her eyes at the teasing going on as she did so. She was friends with Fleur and Hermione. She understood every word. "Go on, all of you sit," she instructed, and waved them off towards a wooden structure that held a long table and a bunch of chairs. "I'll get the food out to you."

"I'll help," Bucky insisted at once, and dipped his head down so that his face was pressed into her shoulder.

"You would distract me," Evangeline informed him fondly. "I've missed you. You go sit with the others, and I'll come sit next to you once I've got the first course out."

Bucky sighed, but relented, and finally released his hold on her. He watched her go, watched her hips sway and her curls bounce, watched her vanish into the tent.

"Come on, Buck," Steve urged with a soft chuckle, and guided Bucky over to the table with a hand on his shoulder.

~oOo~

With the prospect of rotisserie'd beef – to say nothing of desserts – the soup, while a hit, didn't inspire a longing for seconds in any of the men currently sitting around the table she'd transfigured from some of the local flora. Evangeline knew that she could set out the massive pots for the rest of the men that would arrive with Colonel Philips, but these days, she was a bit more selfish than she was back before she gave her life to see the end of Voldemort.

She died for them, and then they kept asking for more from her. Evangeline felt that a little bit selective selfishness was really quite a reasonable response. She'd cooked for her man, and for the men that had helped to keep him alive while she couldn't be with him. She'd added in Colonel Philips when he arrived as an apology for ripping through his brain in search of the information she wanted from him.

She hadn't incapacitated him, she wasn't even as bad to the Colonel as Snape had been to her, but he'd still have a killer of a headache for most of the journey up.

Evangeline had also added Peggy, because the other woman had taken care of her (and because Rogers). In absence of their respective men, the two women had become much closer, and there had been moments when Peggy had been all that preserved Evangeline's sanity. She honestly wasn't sure how the other woman had managed before, with no other women about to have a little girl-talk with when the war got to be too much.

No one else was getting the food she'd made for these few people. The men would have to satisfy themselves with their regular food from the mess, and with the cookies she'd baked for them.

"Potter, you are, without question, the most frustrating civilian I have ever had the misfortune to deal with," Colonel Philips declared when he arrived with his men. "Your impulsiveness, lack of self-preservation instincts, and inability to follow orders would see you court-marshalled if you were actually in the army."

"But I'm not in the army," Evangeline reminded him promptly with a smile. "Here, have a seat and some dinner," she placated as she guided him towards a chair.

The man grumbled, but he sat, and then he stared at the plate of roast beef with roast potatoes, parsnips and pumpkin, with steamed peas and broccoli (all of it still piping hot) that was set before him. There was also a glass of red wine and a small gravy boat within reach.

"Where the hell did you get all this?" Colonel Philips demanded softly. He did pick up his knife and fork, but he didn't immediately dig in. "I know exactly how hard it is to get so much as a single cut of steak out here. Where the hell did you get a whole damn cow?"

"A lady needs a few secrets, Colonel Philips," Evangeline evaded with a smile. "Nothing illegal was perpetrated to get the meat, or any of the rest of it, I promise. Peggy! There's a plate for you here next to Rogers!"

"You're incorrigible," Peggy scolded, but there was a smile on her face as she more than willingly sat down next to Rogers and took up the laid out eating irons. "I'll have you know, I was worried almost sick about you from the moment you took off like that."

"No faith," Evangeline sniffed, and moved off to carve a bit more meat off the (still slowly turning) carcass. There were two Super Soldiers at the table, after all. Their metabolism was four times faster than the average man.

Not to say that the rest of the Howling Commandos weren't doing their part to make sure there would be no left-overs, because they were. Dugan was keeping up with Bucky and Rogers most impressively, almost plate-for-plate. Not quite, but nearly.

Evangeline pulled her wand on the beef to slice off more meat. It was easier and cleaner than trying to attack it with a knife. The carving jinx was very similar to the slicing hex in wand movement and incantation, but it made different sort of cut. It was generally forgotten, but Evangeline had found it in one of the many books in the Black library. The chief difference between the slicing hex and the carving jinx was that, while the slicing hex cut whatever it was aimed at, it cut into the target. The carving jinx cut – carved – bits off.

"Hey," Bucky called softly when she came back to the table carrying the platter freshly loaded up with finely cut meat. He relieved her of the platter, set it on the table, and pulled her gently down next to him. "Did you once hear me asking if it was safe?" he whispered into her ear.

"No," Evangeline allowed.

"I recognised the feel of your magic as soon as I crossed into the wards," he told her, his voice low and in her ear only while his arm went around her waist. "Knew straight away I could relax and forget about all the dangers of the war for a while."

Evangeline hummed in contentment and snuggled into his side.

"You could feel it?" she asked, voice small and just a tiny bit surprised. She had heard his cheer before she'd seen him, after all.

"Yep," Bucky confirmed. "I know war isn't your business any more, but you're still good enough that I know I don't have to worry about you when you're anywhere near where the fighting's happening. I'd rather you weren't anywhere near the fighting, but that's just because I think you shouldn't have to be there, rather than because I don't think you can handle it."

Evangeline sighed a happy little sigh. It was nice to be believed in.

Bucky smiled down at her, and started piling up the clean plate that was next to his. The one in front of her.

"Come on," he urged. "I know you probably tasted as you cooked, but you haven't actually had a sit-down eat yet, I'll bet."

"I haven't," Evangeline agreed, and reluctantly pulled herself away from where she'd been plastered to Bucky's side, head tucked under his chin. As comfortable as it was, it wasn't the best position for eating in, for either of them.

In the end, only half the cow got eaten. There were enquiries about the dessert that Evangeline had mentioned, which put a stop to main course as soon as every plate was cleared of food. That was fine. Evangeline could – and would – carve up the rest of the beef and pack it away in individual-meal-sized containers to be eaten later.

But that was for later.

For now, Evangeline brought out the chocolate cake, the treacle tart, the apple crumble, the blueberry pie, and vanilla ice cream, and set them all on the table in front of the Howling Commandos. Each with a sharp serving blade sticking out from underneath (or a scoop sitting on top, in the case of the ice cream) so that everybody could serve themselves.

"Wow," Rogers commented, eyebrows high and eyes wide.

"It is certainly a very impressive spread," Falsworth agreed. _Considering the way things are being so strictly rationed_ went unsaid.

"Can I have a small slice of everything?" Jones asked hopefully. "I don't know how much more I can actually eat, but I want to try all of it."

"Seconded," Morita agreed.

Dernier was already up from his chair, and was beginning to cut into the chocolate cake. It was a big cake, but he still only took a small slice.

"The cake is divine, and its maker a goddess," he declared, deifying Evangeline for the second time that day, when he'd swallowed down that first mouthful.

"My goddess," Bucky reminded everybody at the table firmly, and wrapped his arm possessively around Evangeline's waist again.


	17. Chapter 17

Evangeline had quietly pulled Peggy aside and handed over the Christmas presents she'd been hanging onto, for both Peggy herself and for Rogers. Having a belated Christmas Dinner in her tent was scrapped as an idea. She'd made a feast, yes, but she was aware that Peggy probably (definitely) wanted some alone-time with her Captain now, rather than spending more time in the company of others.

Evangeline felt the same way about Bucky. She wasn't going to chivvy him away and keep him all to herself in her tent for the rest of the war, but she did want some couple-time.

It was a plan for the evening that Bucky definitely agreed with. He even helped her with starting the dishes (magic would finish them) and packing up the left-overs from dinner, just so that he could stick right by her side.

They had actually had a small argument over the dishes. Bucky said that, as Evangeline had cooked, she shouldn't be the one cleaning up after. Evangeline had countered that she'd made the mess and it was her job to clean it up, and then thrown in that she hadn't been the one fighting in a war.

They'd come to a compromise fairly quickly, but Bucky had insisted that "When this war is over, whoever does the cooking doesn't do dishes after."

Evangeline's cheeks had warmed and her heart had fluttered at that statement, at the look in his eyes when he said that to her. The veiled but stated intent to stick together when the fighting was over, to live together and cook for each other. She could only nod in silent, blissful happiness.

After everything in the kitchen was packed up and clean, they adjourned to the lounge room and Bucky started flipping through Evangeline's record collection.

"Now, I know you haven't heard this before," Evangeline declared with a laugh as Simon and Garfunkel started singing _Homeward Bound_. The record wouldn't even be made for another thirty years, give-or-take.

Bucky shrugged in acknowledgement.

"The title of the first track on the B-side appealed," he explained easily. "Not like it's turned out to be a bad decision, Doll," he pointed out with a smile.  
"True," she agreed. "Simon and Garfunkel are very good, and they've got something for every mood, or just about."

Bucky took her hand and pulled her to him for a shuffle.

"Missed you," he said softly into her hair.

"Missed you too," she answered, though she spoke into his chest.

"I don't know how much more of this I can take," Bucky admitted. "This whole war. It's tearing me up inside, Doll. Please tell me it will be over soon?"

"If it runs more-or-less the same way as it did in my old world, then it should be safe to say you'll be home for Christmas this year," she assured him softly.

"Thank God," he praised, his words a benediction, a reverent, hoarse whisper. "I hate this war. I hate what it's made me do, made me become."

Evangeline knew he wasn't talking about the Super Soldier bit.

_Homeward Bound_ became _Bridge Over Troubled Water_ , and their shuffle became a gently rocking sway. Two sets of arms squeezed just a little tighter.

"I got you a Christmas present," Evangeline disclosed when the sweet little hymn of a song ended, and _America_ started. "You weren't here."

"I'm here now," Bucky replied, then added, "I have one for you too. Been carrying it around in one of the pouches that's meant to be for ammunition."

"When did you get time to do Christmas shopping?" Evangeline half-demanded, a curious little smile tugging at her lips.

"I didn't," Bucky admitted freely, a wry twist to his lips. "I wrote to my sister back in the States, sent her some cash, asked her to. Told her to get herself something as well."

"Trudy bought it?" Evangeline repeated, a little surprised.

"I told her what to get though," Bucky added, that sweet, cocky, boyish grin on his face again. The one that said he knew he'd done good.

He'd told her about his family, how his little sister, one Rebecca Gertrude 'Trudy' Barnes, was the only family he had left, strictly speaking. She was married, had a kid on the way, and her husband had apparently been drafted about a week after they found out. Talk about following good news with bad.

Bucky had walked her down the aisle. Their father had been killed in a factory fire less than a week after her beau had asked permission to marry her. Their mother had held on long enough to see her baby girl married, but she'd died not long after. Consumption, the doctors had said. Broken heart, Bucky and his sister privately knew.

Evangeline hadn't known that Bucky had told his sister about her though. It was, well, it was a little flattering, actually. Evangeline ducked her head down to hide the blush that had decided to warm her cheeks just then, and flicked her wand into her hand from the holster on her wrist. A summoning charm had her present for Bucky flying across the room to them.

"I... I made it for you, but I'm not quite sure it's your style," Evangeline admitted as she caught the parcel and guided him to her couch.

"Whatever it is, it's perfect," Bucky assured her firmly, and swapped the present he'd plucked out of one of the pouches on his belt for the simply wrapped but large-ish, lumpy gift Evangeline held for him. Then he pulled her down to sit with him, close enough that she was almost in his lap.

It was a jacket. Dragon-hide, quilted, the leather carefully worked so that it felt as soft as butter even while retaining it's everything-proof qualities. Evangeline had spent hours working on it, this was after Colonel Philips had told her off for scaring his men with her machete.

She'd bought several dragon-hides, whole, a bit after the war. Before she'd decided to become a Healer/Doctor, when she had still been trying everything and learning everything... and making a finally noticeable dent in her extremely large inheritance with all the purchases her curiosity and paranoia had led her to make.

The hide that Evangeline had used to make Bucky's jacket had come from a Welsh Red. Most magicals, when they thought of Welsh dragons, automatically thought of the Green that was so prolific and dangerous. The reds were less prolific, but just slightly. The one that was really rare was the Welsh White. There were breeding and conservation programs for the White.

Reds were bigger than either the Green or the White, and more lazy. That didn't make them less dangerous though. While a Green or White would spit short gouts of fire at anyone who got just a little too near, a Red would breathe long streamers of flames out just to watch the aftermath... and they spat fireballs at people who got too near, but there was no way to judge when a Red would feel you were too near. Greens and Whites had slightly more regular, recognisable 'invisible lines' that professional dragon-handlers had learned not to cross.

"It's gorgeous," Bucky declared, a light shining in his eyes as he ran his hands over the lapels and the buttons.

"It's not military regulation," Evangeline quipped with a smile, pleased he liked her gift. It was double-breasted, and made in a style that would have looked a bit more right in black pinstripe and on a mobster, but it worked in red dragon-hide leather as well. "But... it is bullet proof, and fire-proof, and water-proof."

"I believe you, but I'm not wearing this where there's a chance of me being shot," Bucky denied at once. "It's too nice for the war. I love it though, definitely my style, though I don't know where I'd wear it for sure... You said you made it?"

Evangeline nodded.

"I missed you," she said, as if that explained everything.

Bucky lay his new jacket down across his knees and wrapped both arms around Evangeline firmly, squeezing her tight to him.

"God, Doll, I missed you too," he breathed into her ear.

Evangeline hugged him tightly back, and for a while they stayed like that.

"Come on," Bucky urged softly as he pulled back. "You haven't opened your present yet."

Evangeline choked on a laugh, but obediently pulled at the paper. Once she got down to the gift, she stared.

"Bucky, are those...?"

"Turns out, an officer makes a bit more than a lowly sergeant," he'd been getting a quite a few promotions with all the missions, and had made major two weeks ago. "Then you can add in winnings from poker nights – because there's times when there's nothing to do but a lot of sitting around, even during a war. There's also almost always a deck of cards to be found. Add in the possibility of the next day being their last, a lot of men really don't mind putting up their whole week's pay for stakes, well, after they've sent a bit home to their old ladies," Bucky explained with a wry smile as he propped his chin on Evangeline's shoulder. "There's also that the Howling Commandos haven't been with any single company for long enough that the men we got stationed with learned not to bet against me. I always win."

Evangeline laughed at the little story of just how Bucky was able to afford a pearl necklace, all the pearls the same size, shape, and colour. Since he'd asked his sister Trudy to buy them on his behalf, he was probably able to afford two such necklaces.

Yes, Evangeline owned gold and jewels in great quantities (everything she owned was tucked away in one compartment or another of her trunk, _everything_ ), and yes, there were pearls among that collection as well. Specifically, pearls that had belonged to her grandmother Dorea Potter nee Black. Most of Dorea's pearls had all been some shade of silvery-grey, though there was the occasional pink in with them.

These pearls were all pure white, the clasp was gold, and Bucky had given them to her. Bucky, who had been a little guy from Brooklyn. Bucky, who had sold and moved furniture for a living. Bucky, who had always put away a quarter of his pay for just in case Steve got sick again had to go to hospital – a fund which had been completely drained twice before, and still left him having to put in a lot of over-time afterwards to pay back the medical bills.

Bucky, who could now afford to buy pearls for a girl – and had.

Evangeline reverently removed the gift from the box, undid the clasp, and moved to hang the pearls from her neck at once.

Bucky's arms untangled from around her waist, swept her hair aside, and claimed the clasp from her hands. He kissed her neck just above the clasp once he'd fastened it.

_America_ finished, and _Kathy's Song_ began.

"You like 'em?" he murmured against her skin. "I know you've probably got enough jewels to swim in, but I wanted to -"

"I love them," Evangeline interrupted, though she carefully didn't move. Moving would mean dislodging Bucky from where he was, and his arms were around her middle again, while his lips stayed against the skin of her neck. "Yes, I'm stupidly rich and have inherited a lot of jewels. No, I don't need more, and I don't really wear things like this very much, but these, and the locket you gave me, are two that I will never be without. Not if I can help it."

Bucky smiled and held her a tiny bit tighter.

Eventually, they stood up to dance to the rest of _Kathy's Song_ , and continued through _El Condor Pasa_ and _Bookends_. Then _Cecilia_ started, and it was such a different song compared to the tone of the others that had come before, that they both burst out laughing. Every other song that had played sounded like some part of _them_ , resonating on some level. The last song of the record's B-side, however, definitely did not. They still danced to it though, Bucky even taught Evangeline how to jitterbug, and they wore stupid grins on their faces as they enjoyed the up-beat song with the not-quite-as-happy lyrics.

~oOo~

Wars always get worse right before they ended. Always. It was like a competition to see which side could leave the other worse off before the peace documents were signed. A race to _actually_ win the war, regardless of whatever the papers might say afterwards.

Hitler shot himself, rather than be captured, and it made big news. It made things a bit sticky as well, because Germany needed a leader if they wanted to negotiate peace. Which they did, especially with the demoralising facts that they were losing the war, and their people were just as frightened of their own government as they were of the enemy. In some cases, they were even more frightened. Talks were finally able to begin in June.

Colonel Philips didn't have the time to suggest Evangeline think about making him more Super Soldiers, he was too busy barking orders, running assaults, and (unlike others of his rank) getting into the thick of the fighting. That was fine by her, as she certainly didn't have the time to make more serum, let alone go through the time-consuming process that preceded the 'creation' of a new Super Soldier. Evangeline was constantly up to her elbows in this soldier's chest, or that soldier's intestines, or doing her best to save another's leg.

She was certainly proving herself as the best doctor of the current era, and if she performed a miracle or two on the quiet, using her magic to fix what non-magical medicine couldn't, then the only complaints were pleas to not be sent back out to fight.

It was a rare thing for the Howling Commandos to have down-time. The closest they got was catching some sleep in a truck or a plane as they were being taken to the location of their next mission. In other parts of the war, the Howlett brothers were similarly being employed to the greatest advantage, because of their noted indestructibility. Parker, as well, was sent on mission after mission after mission, a special team of his own backing him up in a manner similar to the Howling Commandos with Captain America.

The Germans were defeated, their concentration camps and their execution camps forcibly shut down, one after another, throughout May and June. A good work, but not a pretty one. July was a fight for borders, for outposts, for that little stretch of land that one side or another wanted to hang onto. August was filled with cover-fire and revenge. Shooting to make the way clear to get people out. Shooting to get as many of _them_ as could be shot, in payback for having lost a friend, a brother, earlier in the war.

On the second of September, in the year nineteen-hundred-and-forty-five, the war officially, finally, ended.

Across Europe, people breathed sighs of relief. All around the world, people raised their glasses in toast to those who hadn't lived to see the victory. People laughed, cried, and rejoiced in being shipped home to their loved-ones.


	18. Chapter 18

In a quiet corner of a noisy pub, Evangeline sat on Bucky's lap, his arms around her waist and their fingers laced together. He was determined that he never wanted to wear his uniform again after that day, but even if he got back to Brooklyn that evening, none of his old clothes would fit, so he'd have to make do for a little while longer. Steve was next to them, quite ready to wear that uniform for the rest of his life if it was asked of him, and Peggy in her own uniform was beside him. The other couple kissed and held hands and occasionally played footsie under the table, but sitting on the other's lap wasn't something they were quite up for. Peggy had to maintain a reputation, after all. She was a strong, ambitious, intelligent woman in a male-dominated world.

Falsworth, also in uniform, was on Bucky's other side along the wrap-around bench-seat of their booth. Dugan wore a plaid suit as he sat on Peggy's other side, and Morita in a plain grey jacket – not even a suit jacket – boxed in Dernier and Jones, who both wore fine black suits, Jones even had a fedora on his head as he sat next to Falsworth.

There was a bottle of whiskey on the table, the regular sort. Colonel Philips had bought it for them from the bar, even shared a first toast to the end of the war, before he'd excused himself. The war was over, but he still had work to do. Even if it was just packing everything up. Howard had promised to join them later.

Everybody present held their glass with thoughtful absent-mindedness.

"What will you do now?" Evangeline asked them all softly.

"I'm career military," Falsworth admitted a little ruefully. "A bit of a family tradition, and I've been promoted, which is nice. There won't be as much to do now that the war is officially over, but there will be something still. It's almost like the higher-ups aren't happy unless they're pointing men and guns at somebody."

A moment of solemn silence passed as everybody present acknowledged the sad truth of that statement.

"I got a wife and a kid and a small grocery business back in Fresno," Morita declared with fond pride in an effort to break the sad mood that had descended upon them. "Be nice to get back to them."

Dernier's hometown had been bombed. He was going to have to rebuild. Literally. His sister and her family had made it out alive though, so he wasn't going back to absolutely nothing. They'd even saved the goats they kept. His family had made cheese. Dugan had been a foreman at a mine before the war, and he would be a foreman again. Maybe at a mine, maybe somewhere else. Jones wanted to work for the League of Nations as a translator.

Peggy promised he'd have an interview by the end of the week. She has aspirations of her own that involved international politics (picking up what the Strategic Scientific Reserve had become, and expanding it, included) and making sure that the world they'd all just saved stayed safe for many more years to come.

Steve, Howard, and Colonel Philips had all agreed already to help her with that. Philips had the experience to run such an operation, Howard had the money and the gadgets to make it happen, and Steve would be continuing on doing what he did best: being on the ground, running the field operations.

"What about you, Buck?" Steve asked, a hint of hope in his eyes that, once more, his best friend would be there with him.

"I don't know," Bucky admitted. He'd been promoted all the way up to Sergeant-Major back in July, so a military career... Well, between his being a Super Soldier and his track-history of keeping an eye on Steve, doing his best to keep the other man out of trouble, it was probably more than half expected of him at this point. Bucky hadn't ever wanted to be that, though. Sure, he'd done it, because it needed to be done, someone had to do it, and he was the one in a position to... But he hadn't ever wanted it. The only reason he'd learned how to fight in the first place was because he'd needed to save Steve all those times.

And he'd had enough.

Steve could look after himself now, and what Steve couldn't handle on his own, it seemed like he had Peggy and Howard and Colonel Philips to help him out with. Bucky wasn't needed, not like he had been when Steve was small and sick and stubborn as hell and Bucky was the only person in all of Brooklyn and beyond who gave a damn about him. He'd always care about his friend, and he'd be there if he was needed, no question, but...

"What do you want to do, Doll?" Bucky asked, because any decision he eventually made, Evangeline was going to be a factor.

"Before the war, I had planned to set up my own practice," Evangeline offered thoughtfully, leaving out that what she really meant was 'before I turned up in this dimension and era', "but I think I'd like to be a filthy-stinking-rich heiress for a while first. Have some fun."

"What?" came the shocked, stunned, utterly gobsmacked question from all around the table.

"What 'what'?" Evangeline parroted.

"Doll, I'm the only one here you ever told you were outright rich, rather than just comfortably well off," Bucky said with a chuckle as he squeezed her gently in his arms, "and you don't flaunt it, at all, so I forgot half the time too."

"Oh. Well, I'm rich," Evangeline confessed. "Rich of the order that I can buy Howard completely out of his own company, expo and all." She refrained from mentioning that she could do that about ten times over, but only because Bucky gave her another gentle squeeze.

"So, what exactly does beinga _filthy-stinking-rich heiress for a while_ involve?" Peggy asked, genuinely curious.

"Travel," Evangeline announced. "Going everywhere that even might be interesting, and going in luxury and style."

"And company?" Falsworth queried with a sort of parental/big-brotherly concern. "Just because the war is over, doesn't make it safe for a lady such as yourself to travel alone."

"I'm sure Evangeline can handle herself," Peggy defended, a touch hotly. She had to face such prejudices against her sex often, and as chivalrously as Falsworth had intended it (as opposed to other men who were sexist pigs about it), such opinions still grated on the career-woman.

"None of us doubt the Doc's ability to take care of herself," Dugan placated quickly.

"I am just suggesting that she shouldn't have to," Falsworth agreed.

"I know that," Evangeline assured them all with a smile, "and I truly do appreciate the sentiment, both sentiments actually, and please don't think otherwise. I was actually hoping to have a travelling companion from the get-go," she added, and turned her head enough to catch Bucky's eye over her shoulder. "A doll-faced bloke with a heart of gold, for preference."

"Can't be a whole lot of those around," Morita joked, a smirk wide on his face.

Jones and Dugan snickered and Falsworth chortled. Dernier barked a loud 'ha!' when Jones translated the implications for him. Dernier was quite good at English now, but unsaid things were harder for him to catch. Especially when they hinged on in-jokes that Dernier had missed at the time, and hadn't been filled in on since.

"Bucky?" Evangeline called softly. She wanted to see the sights, yes, but she specifically wanted to see them with him. If he wanted to just settle down in the suburbs somewhere, in a house with a green roof and white picket fence, with two-and-a-half kids, then she'd do that too. Happily, even, but she'd like to see the sights with him first.

"Long as I'm with you," he answered, the words whispered into her skin. "But could we stop by Brooklyn first? I'd like you to meet my sister."

"We can do that. I'd like to meet her too," Evangeline said as she nodded her agreement. "Besides, I've never been to New York."

"I'll show you all the best places," Bucky promised.

"Where else were you thinking of going?" Peggy asked with a smile, not even pretending she hadn't been straining her hearing to catch every word.

"The Canadian Rockies, Cairo, Rome, Athens, the jungles of India and the Amazon, the African Savannah," Evangeline listed off happily, animated and excited and not at all planned-out yet. "I want to drift down the Nile in Egypt and then go on safari."

Hunting the animals of Africa was very, very strictly regulated in Evangeline's old time and world, so shooting herself an elephant or a lion hadn't been an option. But it was still legal to hunt the 'big game animals', here and now, she was fairly sure. Not that she was bloodthirsty, but it was an idea that tickled her a little.

Partly because she knew Hermione would have bitten her head off for it, but couldn't now because of their separation.

"Sounds like we're going to be busy for a while," Bucky commented.

"Mm," Evangeline agreed. "Definitely unavailable for callers, unless it's family or an emergency. I promise though Peggy, we meet someone who we could send your way, then we will."

~oOo~

"I thought you'd stopped growing!" were Trudy's first words to Bucky when she saw him.

"Hello to you too, Trudy," Bucky answered her with a grin as he swept her up into a hug. As the older sibling, and one who had laid claim to the nickname of 'Bucky' for three years already, his little sister had refused to be 'Becky' or 'Becca'. "And I promise, this time, I'm not going to grow any more. This is just because of the stuff that made Steve into Captain America."

Trudy nodded in acceptance. She had already known of this from his letter, but seeing it was different.

"I saw one of his shows before he went over," she said. "If it hadn't had his name on the poster, I almost wouldn't have known it was him."

"Surprised me too, the first time I saw him," Bucky confessed, and it was almost an easy confession. Almost. The memories associated with his time under Zola's 'care', prior to his being rescued by his best friend, and the ensuing march across thirty miles of Austria back into Allied territory... well, not really the best days of his life ever.

Trudy looked passed Bucky's shoulder – which was higher than she remembered it being – to see the woman who had come with him. Brought him, if the way she rested against that big black motorcycle was any indication, with one gloved hand rested casually and comfortably on the handlebars.

"That her?" Trudy asked softly.

"That's her, Doctor Evangeline Potter," Bucky confirmed, a soft smile on his face as he followed Trudy's gaze.

A smile Trudy hadn't ever seen before on her brother's face. She'd seen it on their father's face when he looked at their mother. She'd seen one similar to it on her husband's face sometimes, when he looked at her. Bucky, for all the girls he'd taken out on a date and dancing in the past, hadn't ever worn a smile like that. There had been times when Trudy had worried that he'd never get to smile that particular smile.

Some women, when their brothers showed up on the doorstep with a woman they'd never met, would have instantly disapproved. The suspicion that some foreign hussy was trying to take advantage of beloved family for whatever reason, instantly planted in their minds.

Trudy, however, had been hearing stories about Doctor Evangeline Potter. Mostly from the letters she got from Bucky and Steve – and yes, the scrawny kid who'd become Captain America had written to her, kept her up-to-date with the scrapes Bucky got caught up in, same as Bucky had told her all about the messes Steve charged righteously into. A lot of those letters were blacked out, but enough came through. There had also been a couple of small, utterly unbiased little articles in the newspapers though. Well, unbiased so far as how well suited Doctor Potter was to Trudy's brother, anyway.

There had been reports of the woman doing things that had previously been believed to be medically impossible. Men she triaged who should have died in ten minutes managed to survive the five-hour drive to the mash units, and her prep-work had made the work of the mash surgeons so much easier. Not least because she apparently always provided an itemised list of every wound, injury, and potential complication – as well as how best to avoid the last, and the order in which the former should be dealt with.

There was also the new prosthetic limb that she had famously patented. Yes, the original designs were stolen, but the original designs had also made the arm a weapon. Doctor Potter had made the prosthetic design lighter, cheaper, simpler (and not a weapon), slightly less blatantly-prosthetic (though that only went so far, however good it was), and she'd used the same stolen designs as a base to make prosthetic legs as well as arms.

Stark Industries was producing the new prosthetics already, and while the new prosthetic did have to be purchased, any repairs or maintenance would be free for the life of the user so long as they could produce a Purple Heart. An award that every man who had lost an arm or leg in the war was most certainly a recipient of.

Doctor Evangeline Potter was the sort of woman that inspired girls to be more than just pretty faces; more than secretaries, or telephone operators, or chorus girls. She inspired girls to become women who knew their minds, to become the sort of woman who worked hard to get what she wanted out of life. She was as much of an icon as Captain America, the Howling Commandos, and Agent Carter.

And this woman had brought Bucky home to Trudy. Had let Bucky drag her into Brooklyn to meet his last remaining family, more accurately, even if she had been the one in control of that motorcycle. This was the woman that her brother had brought home, to introduce to family. The woman that he'd asked her to buy pearls for. The woman that, if Trudy was any judge, he'd soon be offering their mother's ring to.

Honestly, all things considered, Trudy was a bit more worried about Bucky becoming the lady doctor's 'kept man' than any other option. A position she knew he wouldn't, couldn't, be happy with for long. Well, she'd just have to watch them together before she made up her mind.

"Both of you, come in," Trudy ordered, a secret little smile of her own on her face. "And don't worry about the motorcycle," she added. "This is a good neighbourhood. I promise, no one will touch it."

"Thank you," the red-headed woman said, "and I was already assured as to the safety of the motorcycle," she added.

Bucky chuckled, and Trudy had a feeling she might be missing a joke, but she let it go, and stepped aside to let her brother and Doctor Potter (her almost-definitely future-sister-in-law) into her home.


	19. Chapter 19

His old clothes, the majority of which (as suspected) no longer fit at all, were donated to a second-hand store, and a new wardrobe for Bucky had been quickly acquired. Evangeline hadn't offered to pay for everything, though she could have. The fact was that so could Bucky, and he had just enough pride in himself as a man, and as a person who took care of others (rather than the other way around) that he wouldn't touch Evangeline's money for this. He bought his own clothes. Evangeline did buy him a couple of things, granted. She thought he'd looked good in a hat he'd tried on before he'd noticed the price, so she bought it for him. She thought a set of cuff-links would set off his eyes, but knew he couldn't afford more than one (completely plain) pair, so she bought them for him. She thought a pair of shoes he liked, but which were just beyond his budget, absolutely belonged in his wardrobe... and so on.

Evangeline also kept his uniform; both the dress uniform with all the medals and ribbons and braid, and the uniform he'd worn in the field with the other Howling Commandos. She knew he never wanted to wear a uniform again, so she washed, pressed, carefully folded, and put them away in a camphor-wood box (engraved all over with preservation charms) at the back of the linen closet in her tent.

Outfitted in civvies once more, and feeling really damn good about it, Bucky took Evangeline on a tour around his favourite sites of Brooklyn (including the dance halls, of course), then greater New York, before they ventured into Manhattan. They went to Staten Island, Liberty Island, and Coney Island. They took in Broadway and visited the Rockerfeller building. They spent a week just exploring every little bit of Central Park. They visited the museums, went to the top of the Empire State Building, and the top of the Chrysler Building, and even stopped in at Tiffany's for a look around, though they had neither one bought anything there.

Bucky had rented his old apartment again for while they stayed in Brooklyn. Evangeline had set up her tent in the living room, to his amusement, but he could understand the logic of it. There was more space inside that tent than there was in the whole apartment. The tent had Evangeline's bed as well, which was important. As much as some people had frantically climbed into bed with their sweethearts for fear of dying the next day, and others had married in the middle of everything after one date and a month of correspondence... well, they hadn't. They hadn't even shared their first kiss yet. Bucky was determined to do completely right by Evangeline, and he wanted their first kiss to be completely memorable and magical.

Yes, he'd pressed a single, lingering kiss to her neck once, just after fastening that string of pearls around her neck. But that was the only time he had faltered in his restraint and resolve.

He had it on good authority that it wouldn't just be _their_ first kiss, but also Evangeline's _first_ kiss, which, to him, made it twice as important that it be special. Bucky had learned, over many conversations with Evangeline back before he'd gone through the Super Soldier process and his arm had been restored, that the society she'd come from treated even first kisses as almost as sacrosanct as the wedding night. Well, for people of her status (that is to say, nobility. She was heiress to the Ancient House of Potter, and to the Ancient and Noble House of Black). If she'd kissed a boy, that would have been tantamount to declaring betrothal.

The Weasleys were all so, so damn lucky they hadn't had to worry about that sort of thing. Not that there was anybody that Evangeline had wanted to kiss anyway, but the principle of the thing remained.

So, Bucky was being good. For now. He was also bearing in mind the threats made against him by the ghosts of the men who had loved her as a child. He could still vividly recall dire consequences promised if he mistreated her in any way. Not that he ever would. At least, not on purpose. He was too far gone in love with her for that.

They had come close to kissing a couple of times: as they stood at the top of Lady Liberty, when they'd kind-of crashed into each other while skating at the Rockerfeller Ice Rink in the early hours before most of the folks had even woken up to start their days... when she'd been waiting for them at the rendezvous point, the only person there to greet them... when he'd taken her dancing that Christmas just after he'd gone through the Super Soldier process.

There were more 'almost kisses', and that moment of weakness, that little compromise that he'd allowed himself where he got a tantalising, and all-too-brief taste of her skin, but still. Tempting though it so often was to just close the distance between them and learn once and for all if her lips tasted as sweet as he imagined, Bucky held himself in check.

But he wanted to. So badly. As they sat in her lounge room – hers, not his, because her tent took up just about all of his, and hers was nicer anyway – and she traced nonsense patterns into the knee of his slacks while he twirled one of her loose curls around a finger, just snuggled up to one another as a record that hadn't been made yet played softly (the musical it was the soundtrack for wasn't even due to be produced for another five years), and Evangeline hummed quietly along. With little bits of both the male and female parts.

Two tracks in, Bucky had asked if they couldn't come back to hit up Broadway when it hit the stage, and Evangeline had happily agreed, though she'd also informed him that the movie produced of it with Frank Sinatra was musically superior, even if some of the songs were changed.

Having listened to more than a few of Evangeline's Frank Sinatra LPs, Bucky declared he was looking forward to it.

"Alright already, so call a policeman! Alright already, it's true. So new? So sue me..."

A couple of songs later, she only snickered as two female voices sang about marrying a man post-haste and then grooming him to be a suitable husband, rather than waiting for him to shape up first and then having the wedding.

"Something funny?" Bucky asked, an eyebrow raised and a sardonic half-smirk on his face. He was well aware of a great many couples who seemed to work like that. For a given extent of 'work', anyway.

"It's just so ridiculous," Evangeline explained. "Marrying a man because you want to change him."

"And you don't see the irony?" Bucky quipped lightly as he moved a hand to tickle her side. The hand that he hadn't had when they first met, just to make sure she got the point he was aiming at.

Evangeline giggled under the attack.

"I wanted to back out, if you recall," she reminded him as she squirmed, "and – and the serum only – only enhances. Doesn't change."

"Changed Steve," Bucky countered, withdrawing his attack.

"Enhanced," Evangeline reiterated as she took deep breaths to calm herself down. "Inner, spiritual qualities were maximised and manifested in the physical body. And you wanted it, for the chance to get your own arm back rather than having a prosthetic. I'd have never done it if you didn't want it."

"I know," Bucky agreed, and with a smile on his face, he rubbed his nose along her hair-line. Not quite a kiss. "I know. I love you, Doll."

Evangeline's breath hitched. For a moment she was frozen, then her face swung abruptly up to face his.

"Really?" she asked softly.

"Yes, Evangeline Potter," Bucky confirmed solemnly as he realised, actually, this was the first time either of them had said those three little words. Well, apart from when they were humming along to a song. "I love you."

"I love you too," Evangeline confessed as happy tears gathered in the corners of her eyes.

Mentally, Bucky decided to never mind the perfect place, or weather, or date, because this was the perfect moment. He withdrew a small, velvet-covered box from his pocket. He'd been keeping it there since Trudy had given it to him as he was walking out her front door that day when he and Evangeline had showed up on Trudy's doorstep after the war. It was his mother's ring.

"Think you could stand to marry me?" he asked hopefully, voice soft as he flipped the lid up and held the ring between them, in offering to her.

Bucky's eyes widened in surprise as a pair of soft lips slammed into his.

Not that he let the surprise catch him flat-footed for long. Bucky already had one hand in her hair and the other at her waist. He used both to pull her even closer, used the hand in her hair to tilt her head just a little in one direction as he slanted his own the other way, and took advantage of the angle to make the kiss deeper.

He felt her hands flutter up his back, around his shoulders, into his hair. He felt when his lungs started to burn and her chest started heaving against his, both needing to breathe, and backed up just a tiny bit. They both barely gasped in a fresh lungful before they surged back together again.

"I think I could be convinced," Evangeline agreed when they parted again, her voice breathy.

Bucky didn't look away from her beautiful, bright green eyes as he pulled the ring from the box and slid it onto the appropriate finger. He couldn't stop smiling either.


	20. Chapter 20

Unfortunately, not everything was perfect. It felt like it was when the sun was shining and they were up and about together, but at night... Bucky hadn't left the war behind quite as much as he'd wanted to. He couldn't sleep on his bed. It was too soft. He'd moved the old couch cushions to the floor in his bedroom to sleep on. He'd done it with a sardonic, fondly reminiscing twist to his mouth – he and Steve had slept on the floor, on the couch cushions, when they were kids and Steve was staying over.

It had worked for letting him get comfortable enough to sleep, but the act of sleeping had become a new problem unto itself.

During the war, the most sleep he could remember having gotten at a stretch was four hours, apart from when he was bunked down at the SSR camp, and that's if he was lucky. There had still been the sound of artillery fire somewhere, or the rumbling of an engine as he slept in the back of a truck.

Brooklyn at night wasn't exactly quiet, but the sound of engines was more distant, and the noise of ordinance completely absent.

Bucky started turning the radio on in his bedroom, just quietly, before he went to bed. Just to have a bit more noise. Something going, voices, because there had also always been someone awake and talking about something back on the war front.

Then there were the dreams. It hadn't been much of an issue during the war. He rarely slept long enough to dream, and he was living in the middle of a nightmare anyway. Occasionally he woke up in a cold sweat, afraid he was back under Zola's knife, but he hadn't dwelt on them. They'd almost completely vanished after Evangeline had lobotomised the man, and Bucky had gotten to see the worm sitting in his cell, nothing but a drooling husk.

It was an issue now. He slept longer, but while he slept, his mind conjured up all the horrors of war that he'd seen... and made him watch them again. The dreams put him back in the trenches, back in Hydra's clutches, back behind the scope of a rifle he didn't want to shoot... even back on that train, hanging on for dear life, Steve looking at him desperately and then brokenly when he fell to his death. A few times, Bucky had woken up with a jolt and immediately reached across with his right arm to make sure he still had his left, had made sure he could feel every finger and that each one worked.

During the war, the lack of proper sleep hadn't been something that the one-oh-seventh let themselves worry about. They slept in shifts, mostly napping any time there was a lull. It wasn't as difficult after Steve had saved him from Hydra, Steve's very presence in the next bunk soothing enough to let him get enough sleep. Even when the nightmares came. After he'd been put through the Super Soldier Process, lack of proper sleep became a non-issue entirely. The serum took advantage of whatever small amount of sleep he got, so he was always sufficiently rested when he woke; he wasn't ever tired, and he could always get on with the mission. It was doing him similar favours now.

Which meant that Evangeline had no idea he was having trouble sleeping, that he was having nightmares, until he fell asleep in her lap, on her couch, with her humming softly and carding her fingers through his hair. When it was him in his bedroom, and her several rooms away in her tent... the few times he had woken with a scream in his throat, she wouldn't have heard.

Evangeline definitely heard when he screamed, rolled off her couch onto the floor, and landed at her feet with a heavy thump.

He didn't look up. He knew Evangeline loved him, knew he loved her, knew she wouldn't think less of him for having nightmares about the war. What he knew didn't help him much in that moment, where it felt like shame and weakness to still be dreaming of the horrors he'd escaped.

"The nightmares are almost as bad as the war itself, aren't they?" Evangeline offered softly, her voice knowing. "Or maybe worse, because the war is still tormenting you when it's supposed to be over, and you're supposed to be free of it. But you're not, and it's. Not. Fair."

That's right. Evangeline had been in a war when she was a teenager. She'd probably been through this special hell that was trying to sleep.

"The bed is wonderfully soft, but you can't lie on it for more than ten minutes. Sure as hell can't sleep on it. It's too soft, you're sinking into it and you can't fight against the heavy blanket and the soft bedding at the same time, but you need to. The noises aren't right either. It's too loud, or too quiet, and you're exhausted all the time," Evangeline paused, and corrected herself. "No, you're not. You've got the serum, so you're not tired physically, but your mind feels the strain."

"I dream about the trenches, and Zola, and falling from the train, and that my arm is gone again," Bucky admitted, his voice a hoarse croak. His confession was made to the floor beneath him, rather than facing Evangeline.

There was a shuffle of fabric. A warm body stretched out against his back, slim arms wrapped around his chest, a delicate chin propped over his shoulder, and a kiss was lightly planted on the corner of his jaw.

"I've got a potion called Dreamless Sleep," Evangeline said. "It's slightly addictive, so dosage has to be very carefully controlled, and you can't take it for too long because of reasons. Side effects, a bit like being addicted to morphine. I don't know if it would even work for you though," she admitted.

"The serum," Bucky guessed.

He felt her nod.

"It might just burn through the potion before it could do any good," Evangeline agreed.

"What did you do about your nightmares?" Bucky asked in a mumble. "You just said the potion was slightly addictive. Can't see you being willing to risk it."

Evangeline pulled back.

Bucky sat up and turned to look at her, surprised.

She sat in a tailor-seat, her mint-green silk pyjama pants pooling a bit around her ankles, her eyes dark, shadowed emeralds that were fixed firmly on the point where her limbs crossed before her.

"I did, at first," she admitted. "Madame Pomphrey, the school nurse, gave me a small dose on Friday nights so that I'd be able to sleep through until lunchtime on Saturday if I wanted to, since Saturday was the only day there weren't classes going on."

That's right, she'd told him, she'd gone back to school after her war. Done her last year and graduated.

"She was very firm that I wasn't to continue taking it at all after I graduated," Evangeline recalled in a horrible, detached manner. "She even wrote to the hospital and the potions suppliers to make sure I wouldn't be able to buy any. My potion-making ability at the time prohibited me from making my own. I've gotten a lot better since then, but I haven't taken any more of that potion, either. Do you think less of me?"

"Never," Bucky swore solemnly, and wrapped his big, calloused hands around her slim, delicate (also slightly calloused) fingers. "I'm a bit surprised, but you were a teenager in a war, so I'm also not. If we could be sure the potion would work for me, then I'd be taking it. Hell, I'm just about ready to take morphine."

"Absolutely not," Evangeline denied.

Bucky smiled.

"I said 'just about', not that I was going to," he assured her. "Besides, you're the doc. You know best about this stuff."

Evangeline sighed.

"Morphine probably wouldn't work for you either, again, because of the serum. I just don't want to risk you having an adverse reaction," she said softly. "Unlikely as it is to happen at all."

Bucky nodded. He'd kind of guessed that for himself. His girl loved him, and she looked out for him, and because she was a doctor, that gave her extra scope for knowledge that he was fine and worry that he wasn't.

"So, no Dreamless Sleep, and if you tell me you also tried morphine..."

"I didn't," Evangeline said with a vaguely wet chuckle. "The side-effects of morphine were and are too well known for me to want anything to do with it, ever. I took to knocking myself unconscious, and having a servant wake me during the week before I graduated. Sometimes I still did that after as well."

"That... doesn't sound healthy," Bucky offered cautiously.

Evangeline shook her head.

"It wasn't," she admitted freely. "I lasted about a year after graduation before my friends staged an intervention. Well, about my sleeping habits, at least. They tried to make me leave the house and get back out in the world too, but I managed to win that argument," Evangeline recalled fondly. "I marked the date on my calendar. It's not every day I won an argument against Hermione, Luna, Susan, _and_ all of the Weasley clan. Daphne gave me a glass statue of a sleeping dragon a year later, exactly, in commemoration, so I know I wasn't the only one to mark the date."

Bucky chuckled at the story.

"It was also Daphne that actually solved the sleeping issue," Evangeline continued. "Suggested I cast a Patrounus to guard me as I slept, and introduced me to tai chi."

"What's..." Bucky frowned in confusion. Not about the Patronus. He'd read about Evangeline's Patronus in _Great Wizards and Witches of the Twentieth Century_. It was the other one that had him furrowing his brow. He was unsure if it was some Asian herb like the kind that got burned like in the grocery shops that catered to the Chinese-Americans that made the places smell funny, or something a person ate, or what. "What's tai chi?"

Evangeline smiled, pulled them both up from the floor, and promptly showed him. Turned out tai chi was quarter-speed exercises and stretches while doing funny breathing and thinking about very specific things at the same time.

Bucky, while willing to sacrifice a little of his dignity in private if it saved him nightmares, requested that they dance at least one song every evening before going to bed in trade. A compromise that Evangeline was more than happy to make.

~oOo~

They were married on the twenty-seventh of February in the year nineteen-forty-six. Peggy, Steve, Howard, and all of the Howling Commandos and their families had been invited. They'd even invited Colonel Philips, though he had regretfully declined, as he had some big brass meeting on the same date that he couldn't get out of – and it would be going all week. Evangeline had offered to pay for all of them to fly to New York to make it, those who weren't in or near New York already (and didn't have Howard's bags of money). Naturally, Trudy and her family were in attendance as well.

The pair had decided that they would make Evangeline's world tour (her rich-heiress-doings) their honeymoon. They'd go everywhere, do everything, and Bucky would use the time travelling and meeting people to figure out what, roughly, he wanted to do with himself for the rest of his life. He could go back to selling furniture if he wanted to, or he could be a stay-at-home father (because they both wanted at least one child, not immediately, but some day). He could become a musician or an artist or a writer, he could go to one of the universities and study if he wanted to, Evangeline was happy to support him if that was what he wanted.

He could decide to follow Steve again, and Evangeline would follow along as well if he chose that, because the sort of organisation that Steve and Peggy were building with Howard and Colonel Philips? People would get hurt, somehow, some way, maybe not always terribly, but they'd need a doctor eventually.

If he wanted to open a coffee shop, or a gym, Evangeline would back him up. If he wanted to become a baseball coach or a high school teacher, she'd be right there with him, all the way.

If Bucky decided that he just wanted to keep travelling, seeing the world and everything in it, with her, at leisure for the rest of his life... then they could do that, too.

The little church in Brooklyn that they got married in was a pretty place. It was the same church that Trudy had been married in before Bucky had been shipped out. They had the same minister as had performed the service for Trudy as well. Reverend Meesham was old and creaky, but his smile was bright and his joy at getting to lead their wedding was real. It might well be the last one he got to officiate before his legs were too weak to hold him up any more. He'd also known Bucky for most of the young man's life, so he was even happier to get to do this for him.

Bucky wore a brand new suit for the occasion. Howard had dragged Bucky (and Steve, who was the Best Man; Howard's job was to walk Evangeline down the aisle and give her away) off to the clothes stores that he stocked his own wardrobe from, and insisted on paying for the suits Bucky chose – in lieu of a wedding present, he claimed at the time. That didn't stop him from giving them a very fine, very large, bed-frame as well. Complete with mattress bought almost-according to Steve's recommendation, since he knew better than Howard the sort of bed that Bucky would be used to sleeping on. It was a bit softer than Steve had suggested, but Evangeline and Bucky would either adapt to the mattress, or replace it.

Evangeline, on the other hand, had claimed Peggy as her Maid of Honour (and only brides' maid), and pulled out her wand rather than going around the bridal shops. For herself, Evangeline conjured a dress similar to what she recalled seeing Kate wear when she married Prince William (not that either were born yet. Elizabeth the Second wasn't even due to marry until the following year). The dress wasn't an exact replica, of course. Evangeline had decided that she could very happily live without the great long train, and the slightly-revealing lace was replaced by simple (ha!) plain, white silk.

Yes, it was the myth that a bride shouldn't make her own dress, that for every stitch she sewed she'd loose a tear. Evangeline wasn't sewing it though. She'd conjured it as seamless. She thought that neatly side-stepped the myth. Even if she put no stock in the myth at all.

Peggy's dress was blue, and similarly conjured by Evangeline. Initially on a dressmaker's form, so that Peggy could give opinions on what she did or didn't want. The only thing she wasn't given a choice on was the colour. Evangeline was adamant that the only red she wanted at her wedding was going to be her hair, and that was done up in a bun and largely hidden beneath her veil. Even the roses were white.

She conjured a dress for Trudy too, having become good friends with her future-sister-in-law since meeting her. Trudy had opted for a lovely butter-yellow colour for her dress when Evangeline was making the dresses and offering options.

"Do you, James Buchanan Barnes, swear to love this woman?" Reverend Meesham asked.

"I do," Bucky answered.

"Do you swear to honour her, comfort her, and keep her in sickness and in health, in times of richness and of destitution?"

"I do."

"Do you swear to be true to her, to forsake all others, and cleave only to her side?"

"I do."

"Do you swear to cherish her as your wife, for better or worse, to be parted by nothing less than death itself?"

"I do," Bucky swore solemnly, gladly.

"Then claim her as your wife," Reverend Meesham instructed gently.

Bucky took one of the two golden bands that Steve held for him, the smaller one, and slipped it onto Evangeline's finger. He slid it up the digit until he was butted against his mother's ring.

Reverend Meesham turned to Evangeline.

"Do you, Evangeline Rosalind Potter, swear to love this man?" the smiling old preacher asked, and there were tears starting to well up in his eyes now, barely hidden by his glasses.

"I do," Evangeline declared at once.

"Do you swear to honour him, comfort him, and obey him in sickness and in health, in times of richness and of destitution?"

"I do."

"Do you swear to be true to him, to forsake all others, and cleave only to his side?"

"I do."

"Do you swear to cherish him as your husband, for better or worse, to be parted by nothing less than death itself?"

"I do," Evangeline said, and bit down on the urge to add that she would not let even death separate them.

"Then bind yourself to your husband," Reverend Meesham permitted.

Evangeline took the second ring from Steve, and slipped it onto Bucky's hand. When she looked up, it was to see that the smile on his face matched the one on hers for sheer joy.

"What has been united in the sight of God this day, let no man tear asunder, for it is folly to attempt to break apart what God our Heavenly Father has made whole. I pronounce thee -" and that was the first 'thee' to have slipped in, the whole service. "- Husband and Wife. You may kiss the bride."

Bucky lifted Evangeline's veil, bent his head, and claimed her lips as his for all to see.

They were married.

If someone had told him, back in March of forty-two, that he'd find the one dame for him, he'd have laughed. In part because he'd liked dancing with so many girls, and in part because he genuinely felt that having been drafted was the same as being handed a death-sentence. If someone had told him, back in August of that same year, that he'd some day smile like his was fit to burst, he'd have just shaken his head and given name, rank, and serial number in a hopeless, defeated, half-dead-already tone. If someone had told him, back in April of forty-three, that he'd get a happily-ever-after some day, he'd have scoffed that one-armed men didn't get 'some day' (he wouldn't have done it where Evangeline could have heard him, but he'd still have done it).

But here he was, the war finally over, and he had it all. If it was made just that bit more real by the smooth gold bands, one on his hand and one on hers, then who would mind if he smiled an extra-goofy smile? After all, it was his wedding day today.

They signed the register while the guests all sang _Amazing Grace_ , which Bucky and Evangeline had both felt was perfectly fitting for them.

After the reception, Evangeline got changed out of her wedding dress and into leather slacks and a jacket, and Bucky pulled on the red dragon-hide jacket that she'd made for him, and he slid into the side-car while she straddled the motorcycle (much to the surprise of all the people who hadn't seen, or had forgotten, the day Evangeline first rode into camp on the big black beast, Bucky an arm down but surprisingly, wonderfully alive in her side-car. Trudy was the exception, as she had much more recently been driven by Evangeline in that side-car on a girl's day out, when Bucky had been left with Trudy's children).

For the first part of their honeymoon, they were going to road-trip all of the Americas. All of it. From the northern most reaches of Canada (but not quite the Arctic) all the way down to the very tip of Chile or Argentina.

Then they'd figure out where to go next.


	21. Chapter 21

Rough Time Line

March 1942 – Barnes gets his orders

August 1942 – Steve takes on his first Hydra base and rescues Barnes from Zola

April 1943 – Zola is captured

December 1943 – Barnes gets Super Soldier'd just in time for Christmas

May 1944 – meet the Howletts

June 1944 – Corporal Parker joins the ranks of Super Soldiers

April 1945 – moving up to the front line to join the Howling Commandos

September 1945 – WW2 ends

February 1946 – Evangeline and Bucky are married and leave to begin their new life together


End file.
